Often, when we listen to a band’s album, we just listen to it and nothing else! …people don’t dwell on details and info regarding the recording. On the other hand, happened to us to have a look of the album’s release, in which contest the band is placed, the band’s genre obviously and even the artists’ geographical origin and all this is still happening, of course. By the time, we’ve become more curious to listen to them because of the knowledge we’ve got, the growing interest… it’s a kind of accomplishment and enrichment to better understand what the various bands created and to become aware of important facts.

It’s possible extending the subject joining a wider range rather than a single band, moving the attention toward a whole current instead of a specific historic period finding out very fascinating details …otherwise they’d stay hidden. One of these concerns two stylistically different, culturally dissimilar musical genres, geographically distant… and yet existed at the same time, furthermore linked in some ways; grunge and black metal.

In the States, at the end of the ’80s, Seattle was about to become the new capital of a subgenre of the rock called grunge… at the same time in Oslo, Norway, a new subgenre of metal was at the beginning, known as black metal. Both genres expressed a distress, they used to voice it using the same instruments, very distorted guitars, thumping basses and drums and the boys who played and sang in these bands had long hair and a strong inner anger.
This anger, this distress came from two completely different social situations, but anger was anger… and the works made by those bands in this magic period would have been the best examples by both genres, it was the turning point, the albums that would have gone down in history.

As already said, they were two musical genres far apart but tied together by lots of similarities… two genres that never met one another but marked by the same destiny… grunge tormented by the use and overuse of drugs which have killed many of those boys, crazy but brilliant… black metal tormented by the hatred and by a power without control which have too early killed many of those just as mad but equally talented boys.
…just thinking that in 1984 in Oslo Mayhem were forming while Soundgarden were born in Seattle… …and just thinking that the back then unknown Soundgarden first “coming out” EP “Screaming Life” is dated 1987, the same year of “Deathcrush”, the back then unknown Mayhem first “coming out” EP! Unsurprisingly, the Soundgarden’s leader, Chris Cornell, «was for all of us like our big brother, he was very generous and always ready to give us tips to improve…» (Eddie Vedder’s words) and the Mayhem’s leader Euronymous has been the reference point for many Norwegian bands, besides the one who gave life to the task.

The end of the ‘80s was a period of stylistic construction, refinement of the system and the appearance, deep and amazing energies, all of them channelled and shortly ready to blow up for both movements.
In fact, in 1991, here it was, the magic decisive year… in Spring, Nirvana were busy recording “Nevermind”, the album that would completely have validated them and the entire grunge action and next fall, on the other side of the world, Darkthrone were in the studio recording “A Blaze in the Northern Sky”, an album with dark and evil sound, which became of primary importance for the following evolution of the entire black metal setting and one of the most successful work of the genre till now.
In the years to come we could find lots of names on either sides who have created outstanding works and this was right the weird coincidence we talked about before, that is the two entities were born and they have expressed themselves at the same period and with the same resources given us masterpieces, without having apparently nothing in common and probably ignoring each other.

Grunge had an impressive success all around the world, while black metal remained a niche genre and again grunge gained brilliant approval for its musical strength, while nobody was talking about black metal regarding music very much, but the principal issue was a variety of vandalic actions and strong anti-Christian causes, but all that helped to create this journey of amazing parallelism.
Two musical ways with an incomparable intensity, which made the early ‘90s a magic, prosperous, once in a lifetime period, maybe.

Unfortunately, magic didn’t last long, in the mid ‘90s something already changed because of the death of two icons, for both genres started a kind of fall, there wasn’t anymore the verve existing few years back.
Of course, grunge proceeded its own journey, but the Kurt Cobain’s murder broke the stability, somehow (yes, murder, because we do absolutely not believe he committed suicide, it’s all bullshit)… grunge played at the end of the ‘90s was different, polished, didn’t have what we were used to, in fact it’s called post-grunge… in Norway, likewise, the murder of Øystein “Euronymous” Aarseth crushed that cursed black magic of the first ‘90s and even black metal, in this instance, persisted, but even in this instance, it’s not like before at all and as with post-grunge, people began to talk about post-black metal, more sophisticated, refined somehow… but less direct, less spontaneous!

Didn’t maybe, the whole matter last enough? What’s caused the strength to fade so quickly?
It’s useless to think how things would have been without these two tragical deaths, it’s useless to imagine how the two movements could move on keeping the early ‘90s unique hallmark, that’s what happened, that’s it… it had to be this way… doesn’t change the fact that the biggest honour has been that we have lived it firsthand… everything happened in those crazy but brilliant 4/5 years gifted us with huge feeling.