Feature: Beyond Horde – The Earliest Christian Black Metal (1989-1995)
If the subject of Christian black or “unblack” metal comes up, it’s almost a virtual guarantee that the infamous Horde and the project’s lone album, Hellig Usvart, will be named as the genre’s ground zero. In the popular mindset, Hellig Usvart remains the very first Christian black metal album, the one that started it all. It remains an album much beloved by fans and one that’s experienced something of a re-appreciation of its merits by a reluctant secular metal underground in some cases, though it remains despised by many who simply cannot fathom how such music can exist in the first place.
But there exists, buried in the catacombs of Christian metal history, evidence that Horde simply weren’t the first Christian act to play this kind of music, nor the only one around that time. Exploring the world behind and around Horde’s magnum opus is much like exploring the bottom of the ocean. The murk and darkness that enshrouds the facts is almost unbearably hard to navigate through, and one encounters only riddles and hints at forgotten existences of bands that may or may not have been. But within all that darkness, there are some interesting finds.
Unlike secular black metal, the unblack metal scene developed within an already defined stylistic framework of what black metal was supposed to sound like. Christian metal has always been a bit of a latecomer when it comes to the more extreme forms of metal especially, so when the very first unblack acts began to emerge, secular black metal as a sound was fairly well established thanks to bands such as Mayhem, Darkthrone, Burzum and Bathory. A Christian act at this time that wanted to play music in this style had a vast musical armoury from which to take influence from, should they so choose to.
One of the first Christian black metal acts actually did not come from Norway or Sweden, but from the USA, specifically from Colorado. They were called Apostasy, though their original name when they formed in 1991 was Beheaded. Information on this band is scant, at best. But in 1993, a demo was released entitled Darker than Thou, a now long-lost recording that predates Horde’s famous debut by a full year. It was followed in 1994 by another demo entitled The Seven Eyes of God, which has thankfully been preserved on a Bandcamp page run by Omnipotent Radio Records.
The Seven Eyes of God is about as primitive in terms of its expression as it can get, not in the Darkthrone sense in terms of style, but simply in terms of its sloppy execution and garage-level production. Still, what remains to us is a fascinating document of unblack metal’s very first beginnings, raw and unpolished, and still rooted in the sounds of thrash and early death metal.
Over in Norway, what would become one of the most beloved and respected Christian black metal acts had already been grinding away in the underground for quite some time, however, and that band was Antestor. Formed in 1989 under the name Crush Evil, Antestor’s first release came in 1991 in the guise of a demo entitled The Defeat of Satan. There are those that would argue that Antestor’s early work was NOT black metal at all, but a hybrid of death/doom, almost more akin to what bands like My Dying Bride and Paramaecium were doing at the time. The argument is fair, and can be made; I myself have noted the death/doom sound in my article ranking the band’s releases. However, anyone who’s listened to black metal for a long time knows there’s a certain sound, a certain feeling, a certain something that is inherent to the style, and Antestor has it on both of their earliest demos.
In fact, I would argue that Antestor’s beginnings are host to some of the most fascinating takes on the black metal style to exist, taking the ominous sounds of the time but giving them incredible weight and a frigid sense of melancholy. Slow, plodding, brooding and cold, Antestor’s Despair and The Defeat of Satan might not hit the heights of later classics like Martyrium and Kongsblod, but they remain essential to understanding the early unblack metal scene. Martyr remains the band’s definitive vocalist and frontman in my view, and his blackened, doomy roars perfectly suit the sound on these records. From the beginning, Antestor were doing black metal differently, forging their own path, and it showed. The feel of black metal undergirds these records in a big way, even if they aren’t the full-on black metal that Horde would churn out a little while later, and their 1995 debut, Martyrium would come to perfect their hybrid sound and become one of the best unblack metal records ever released.
Alongside Horde, another extremely obscure band would form in 1994, releasing only one track before disappearing into the fog. This band was Vomoth, another Australian act like Horde, and their lone single “Beyond the Gate” wouldn’t feature on a release until The Raise the Dead Australian Metal Compilation II in 1995 on Steve Rowe of Mortification’s Rowe Productions. Vomoth was long thought by many to be the work of Jayson Sherlock of Horde, just playing under a different name. However, it later turned out to be the work of Oneil Alexander (under the pseudonym of “Unsadisticoth, the drummer of Christian goregrind act Vomitorial Corpulence. “Beyond the Gate” is admittedly a far different beast, sound-wise, than the assaults heard on Horde’s debut. Repetitious and buzzing, Vomoth’s work comes off like a blend of early Immortal (think Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism or Pure Holocaust) with the restrained minimalism of Darkthrone’s Under a Funeral Moon. The track would become a cult classic, sometimes lauded as the first Christian black metal track ever recorded by some.
Other bands would begin to form around the time of Horde, or in the wake of the impact crater left behind by Hellig Usvart, including Sweden’s Admonish (who wouldn’t release anything until many years later), Norway’s Lengsel, Indonesia’s Bealiah and Kekal, and a very obscure Norwegian act called Belzidum (whose lone demo release Regensburgh seems entirely lost).
But what remains from the earliest days is a handful of precious gems from a time when Christians were trying their hand at a style of metal deemed to be impossible, indeed completely absurd, to be played by Christians at all. But play it they did, planting the seeds for a new wave of unblack metal bands from all over the world to grow and take influence from.
Though these releases are very hard to track down, if not impossible, when it comes to physical copies, I’ve provided links to where you can hear them below.
Apostasy – The Seven Eyes of God can be heard HERE.
Antestor – The Defeat of Satan (a compilation of their first two demos) can be heard HERE.
Vomoth – “Beyond the Gate” can be heard HERE.
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