Bathory - A Metal Saga From the Lands of the North

Writing the history of Bathory is essentially writing the history of Quorthon: the trouble is that very little is known about his biography, aside from his given name (Tomas Forsberg) and his date of birth (17 February 1966), such is the aura of mystery and darkness - which he himself cultivated - surrounding him. Far more important is the fact that this figure was the founder, the only constant member, the songwriter and the multi-instrumentalist of one of the most original and influential bands that metal has ever known: Bathory.

The band's roots date back to 1983, when, after numerous line-up changes, the group Nosferatu (led by Quorthon, who at the time went by the pseudonym Black Spade) changed its name to "Bathory" - a genuine statement of intent, referencing the infamous Countess Erzsébet Báthory, who was also the subject of a signature track by the English band Venom, from whom the group undoubtedly took its first steps.

The band's first official appearance came with two tracks included on the 1983 compilation "Scandinavian Metal Attack": from that point on, the Bathory project increasingly became a one-man band centred on Quorthon, who brought in anonymous drummers for recording sessions and, for that very reason, had to rule out any live activity - which did no small part in fuelling the mystery that swirled around his project within the underground scene.

Bathory was the most important band (or rather, musical project) in the "Nordic metal" strand, rivalled in influence only by the Danish band Mercyful Fate, to whom it stands, at least in the first phase of its career, as a thematic counterpart - through its committed, chillingly lucid, never gratuitous embrace of anti-Christian and satanic ideals - while being its technical opposite, given its absolute rejection of musical virtuosity.

Bathory is, without question, the first band to realise black metal as a genre both in content (through genuine anti-Christianity) and in technique (through the total absence of technical flash), the first to institutionalise it and set it apart as its own entity. Even the vocals - a hoarse, strangled howl - are revolutionary, even compared to the "growl" (usually associated instead with death metal) of Venom's Cronos, to the point that it's more commonly described as a "scream", a vocal technique that had developed out of the German thrash metal of those early years (Kreator, Destruction).

While the first two albums - undeniably strong when judged track by track - saw Quorthon crafting a depraved, dark strain of thrash, steeped in satanic and apocalyptic themes, something so vile and unprecedented, even by metal standards, that it couldn't even get airplay, it's only with the third album that the band's revolutionary contribution truly takes shape. Yet this is only part of Bathory's innovative scope: few bands in metal can boast such a ratio of longevity to productivity, and just as few can claim the honour of having invented no fewer than three metal subgenres: alongside black metal, there's "viking" metal and folk metal (however closely related these may seem, the difference is real and audible).

Drawing inspiration from Venom and Slayer, but pushing even further in terms of minimalism and sonic extremism, Bathory released their debut album, Bathory (Black Mark, 1984): a record that is senselessly deranged, abysmally ugly, a collection of broken-down noise spat straight in the face of anyone within range. Impossible to fully grasp or judge except in hindsight - that is, by looking at the enormous evolution Bathory's sound would go through - this first LP remains, paradoxically, a landmark of rawness and hatred in musical form (if "musical" is even the word).

Just a year later Bathory returned with the album The Return… (Black Mark, 1985), by now a proper album, on which Quorthon seems to have left behind the childish amateurishness of the past, without however dialling down the sheer malevolence that defines him. Taken as a whole, this stands as one of the best thrash albums of those years (comparable in intent to the contemporary masterpiece by Celtic Frost, "To Mega Therion"), a period in which, after the explosion of Metallica, very few bands were able to truly put the masters' lesson into practice.

Bathory, as already mentioned, plays thrash metal in the manner of the German bands of the time - that is, with virtually no technical skill, compensated for by a heavy dose of malevolent passion. It also plays thrash metal with no debt to hardcore, unlike Mercyful Fate or the Canadian band Exciter, the institutionalisers of "speed metal" - proof that the overall evolution of metal has always been an internal affair.

Unlike the bands mentioned above, however, any hint of ornateness is banished from the band's sound in favour of a muffled, malign tone (helped in no small part by Quorthon's utterly unearthly scream), marking a further, important step towards the modern concept of black metal. And yet, beneath the layer of blasphemy and sludgy noise, it's possible to pick out, within the grooves of this record, actual melodies and catchy riffs, as in the Motorhead-esque "Bestial Lust" and in the title track, genuine anthems for the undead.

Although this second record is still not Bathory's fully mature statement, it is a necessary chapter in the shaping of the band's style, and this time it shows far greater musical coherence, marking a further step toward true black metal.

The long-awaited metal breakthrough finally arrives a good two years later, with what is rightly considered one of the most important albums of the 1980s: Under The Sign Of The Black Mark (Black Mark, 1987). Right from the cover art it's clear something has changed: a sinister goat-like creature threatens us from atop a fortress. The fascination with the aesthetics of evil, and its representation, is now a mature achievement; after years of apprenticeship, Quorthon is no longer possessed by evil, but has absolute mastery of it, wielding it at will across these nine tracks (plus the customary "outro" as a hidden track) of pure, coherent malevolence. Almost in parallel, the sound becomes fuller, more distinct and sharper, compared to the confusion of the early releases, and the songwriting is generally more creative: the world of black metal is not a transfiguration of this one, nor is it a faithful representation of it; it is a non-place set in a non-time, an abstraction born of a programmatic rejection of this world, whose values, laws and relationships between people are all overturned. Consecrating this overturning and turning it against the world itself is the intent of black metal: in this sense, little so perverse and destabilizing had appeared in the history of rock up to that point.

Only in the 1990s, and in Norway (better suited than Bathory's Sweden, which would instead become the home of death and doom, to such an attitude), would what this cornerstone dictated be carried forward. Although Norway's Mayhem released the EP "Deathcrush" that same year, the true father of black metal would remain Quorthon, with his Bathory, whose sound had been refining itself toward black metal for several years by then.

This is borne out by the album's double face, which embodies the two souls of black metal: the first majestic, messianic, ritualistic; the second savage, raw and brutal beyond belief. The intro "Nocturnal Obeisance" (01:28) is nothing less than a masterclass in suspense: it chills the blood and disorients before the mad charge of "Massacre" (02:39), a bloodlust that only grows the more it feeds — musically and conceptually the prelude (the massacre) to the macabre bacchanal that will be celebrated throughout the rest of the record/ritual.

"Woman Of Dark Desires" (04:06), dedicated to Countess Bathory, pays homage to Venom's "Countess Bathory" and marks the passing of the torch between old black metal and new: the theme is utterly classic, the morbid fascination of a cursed woman (dating back to the dawn of rock, through Mercyful Fate's Melissa), while the music is new and the interpretation finally fitting. "Call From The Grave" (04:53), claustrophobic like few other tracks right from the intro, shows how music can fuse the most contradictory emotions: the self-satisfied sneer at one's own damnation merges with the lament (the solo is pure anthology material) for one's own suffering.

"Equimanthorn" (03:42), at first just a guitar's death-rattle in the dark, explodes and strikes without mercy: this is one of the album's most extreme tracks, still devastating today. "Enter The Eternal Fire" (06:57) is an exhausting march through darkness and the flames of the Ogre; as savage and possessed as the previous track was, this one is just as harrowing, penetrating, epic (thanks also to masterful, sinister background sounds), a symbol of the irresistible, hypnotic allure of the swirling abyss, reflected in the eyes of a damned soul who is none other than Quorthon himself.

Just as the illusion of an ending sets in, the dull thud of the drums in "Chariots Of Fire" (02:47) arrives right on cue, another brutal bombardment backed by yet another towering performance from Quorthon (not just on vocals, but on every instrument), enough on its own to turn a rock song into a plague of Egypt set to music. Next comes the monolithic "13 Candles" (05:17), punctuated by monastic chants, and the album closes with "Of Doom..." (03:45), in which Quorthon surprisingly abandons impersonality, placing the Bathory project — that is, himself — at the center of the stage, almost as if aware not only of the extraordinary historical importance of this work, but also of the fact that the veneration of evil must never be an end in itself, but must instead reaffirm certain contents, beyond the values it sets out to demolish.

If with Under The Sign Of the Black Mark Quorthon invents an entirely new way of playing and reaches full musical maturity, it will take the following records to achieve a coherent ideology.

Blood Fire Death (Black Mark, 1988) is a transitional album, as indeed every Quorthon album is, given his constant artistic evolution, split between the black-metal harshness of the first phase and the epic tones that would increasingly creep into Bathory's sound. These traits make the album a formidable call to arms, an unbridled hunt that takes no prisoners. The intro is no mere atmospheric filler of the kind that often proves pointless in an album's overall economy: "Odens Ride Over Nordland" (3:00), besides recalling the iconic cover art, is a truly evocative piece like few others, blending Viking chants (the first new element introduced by the album, one that would forever define Bathory's sound) with the sound of hooves, all handled with restraint and refinement; and this is the hallmark of Bathory's epic sensibility, never gaudy or overblown, always calculated, tempered by minimalism. The acoustic, atmospheric opening leads straight into the second track, "A Fine Day To Die" (8:36), where it finally becomes clear how much has changed — not so much in how Bathory play, but in what they're actually playing. Rather than relying on the harrowing speed of earlier albums, this one leans on majestic, Wagnerian power to annihilate the listener. Over eight minutes that never grow tiring, built on a crescendo that stirs an unmatched sense of wartime pathos, repeatedly settling into acoustic pauses before surging back more savage than before. The drums that open the third track, "The Golden Walls Of Heaven" (5:23), deliver one of the most barbaric and compelling experiences rock music had heard up to that point; Quorthon's raucous bellowing and the guitar outbursts — entirely anti-technical, yet carved into the flesh as rarely seen — combine to make the track's sonic assault truly unmatched. "Pace 'Till Death" (3:40), closer to thrash both in form and content (the manic glorification of speed), could pass for a hard rock track shaped by hyperkinetic tempos and sung in a black-metal voice: here too, experimentation is doled out in generous handfuls.

The following "Holocaust" (3:26) is one of the tracks most tied to the band's earlier period, and while irresistible in its paradoxical countdown to destruction, it doesn't add a great deal to the album. In "For All Those Who Died" (4:57), epic grandeur and minimalism are once again lavished in abundance: Quorthon's vocals are more searing than ever, yet strikingly despondent as he utters the track's title, right up to the slaughter inflicted on the listener around the fourth minute. "Dies Irae" (5:12) splits into two parts: the first is one of the record's most extreme passages, the second more measured and emphatic, paving the way for the following track: "Blood Fire Death" (10:30). This track, besides being the ideal meeting point of every hallmark of the band's style — and arguably their masterpiece — represents the very summa of "Quorthonian" ideology: the advent of a new era, a new way of conceiving relationships between people, freed by a savior from the false gods embodied by religions and their moral codes, is narrated with heartfelt passion and the messianic force of his cry by this prophet of metal, who celebrates the epiphany of a savior and the dawning of a world made not only of "blood, fire and death", of barbaric imposition, but also of unconditional freedom. The music lives up to the lofty content of the track, delivering ten minutes of triumphant epic that culminates in apotheosis (in the etymological sense of man's elevation to godhood, that is, redemption and liberation from the limits imposed by morality and religion) around the seventh minute: in the year 1988, in music, something so outrageously powerful was frankly unthinkable, and therefore revolutionary.

From this album, or at least from its most defining passages, a new genre is born: so-called "viking metal" (which could, bookishly, be defined as "black metal plus epic metal"), a genre that would prove highly prolific and widely mined in the following decade, with results that were anything but negligible — quite the opposite: Enslaved, Falkenbach, Amon Amarth are bands that would not merely pay homage to their illustrious forerunner, but would go on to produce accomplished and original work of their own.

Once again, the concept running through all of Bathory's output — the battle against the Christian religion — is carried forward (a genuinely rare thing for anti-Christian bands) with real seriousness, moving from the terrorism of the early albums, clad in open satanism (which nonetheless finds room within this album's internal references: note, in this regard, the first letters of each verse in tracks III and VI), to the evocation of the ancient Nordic religion and its ideological and artistic revenge, which finds its place amid these majestic, brutal notes.

Hammerheart (Black Mark, 1990) is a record that has by now entered the collective imagination of fans of Nordic metal and beyond, perhaps because, beyond carrying the banner of lofty symbolic values, it represents, musically, the decisive (if not final) evolution of Bathory's sound, a definitive turn toward more measured, epic sonorities, marked by tones more proud and melancholic than perverse and brutal. Moreover, for the first time in the band's history we are faced with a concept album, one that tells of the Christianization of the Scandinavian peoples, a process that only ended around the 11th century but which, it seems, never managed to fully root out certain beliefs deeply embedded in the culture and daily life of those peoples. The concept is devoted precisely to the everyday events of Viking peoples set against mythology, unfolding as a series of vignettes painted in strongly wistful and nostalgic tones, which produce effects sometimes more majestic, sometimes more intimate and self-referential: in this sense, in terms of content, it is one of the most "folk" works ever made in the history of rock. With "Shores in Flames" (11:09) it becomes immediately clear, from the intro built on ocean waves, just how much has changed: first of all, the compositions are now hugely expanded, recalling a Wagnerian opera more than the blasphemous ravings of the early records; secondly, where the tracks have lost in direct impact and speed, they have gained in majesty and power (continuing along the path already traced by the previous full-length); finally, Quorthon's voice shifts toward a relatively "cleaner" style of singing (relatively, because from the malevolent bellow of the black-metal records we move to the messianic cry of the bard of the Northern lands), technically bare, but, like all of Bathory's music, capable of conveying truly unique sensations. "Valhalla" (9:35) is another monolith tailor-made for an invocation atop a cliff or a mountain, the confrontation between man and the divine, set against the backdrop of the forces of Nature.

"Baptised In Fire And Ice" (7:58), for all its colossal, uncompromising scale, manages to be anthemic, buoyed by martial rhythms and an irresistible chorus. "Father To Son" (6:29) is split, in its lyrics — which in turn are mirrored in the music — between the grim acknowledgment of the current fate of traditional culture and religion, and the bright hope for their continuation. "Song To Hall Up High" (2:31) ought to be a simple interlude, but it isn't: it's instead a ballad-invocation that dispels any doubt about the sincerity of Quorthon's music and lyrics, such is the declamatory passion that defines it. "Home Of Once Brave" (6:45) is one last act of remembrance, fading slowly into the tragedy of defeat, which only becomes clear in the following track: "One Road To Asa Bay" (10:24). It has rightly become Bathory's most celebrated track, thanks in part to its excellent video, but above all because it is an absolutely unrepeatable piece in terms of pathos and depth, both musically and lyrically. It is also the most anguished and melancholic track Quorthon ever performed: the absolute protagonist is that "hammer heart", bleeding, torn apart by modernity with titanic suffering — that heart which until now had lulled itself in the retelling of ancient legends and traditions, but which must now face historical reality head-on, a reality that sealed the inevitable defeat of those very traditions, crushed by the deceitful idols of an imposed religion. And so, on a note of sadness that is in truth an immense cry from the depths of the heart, the album closes, and, as Quorthon tells us: "It's only the beginning". And yet we like to imagine that Quorthon, amid this sea of despair, wanted to breathe life back into that immortal, timeless spark that is myth: and indeed, he succeeded.

Twilight Of The Gods (Black Mark, 1991) brings Bathory's musical journey to full maturity: even the album's title alone hints at the influences and the bold ambitions Quorthon set out to achieve: "Twilight of the Gods" (the "Ragnarokkr" of Scandinavian eschatology) was in fact also the title of the third day of Wagner's opera, "The Ring of the Nibelung". The lofty achievement of this album is precisely to fully realize Nordic folk fused with echoes drawn from classical music. The result is a record of extremely wistful, nostalgic tones, evocative atmospheres and even further expanded tempos. This time the folk themes are no longer focused on the gestures and events of Nordic peoples' daily life, but revolve around mythology (as the title itself suggests); moreover, this time they are carried by a sound less harsh than on Hammerheart, with an enormous expansion of the acoustic sections and the ever-present backing choirs; only on this album is folk metal fully realized as a genre: that same year, Skyclad (with the album "Wayward Sons Of Mother Earth") attempted something similar, but theirs was largely Celtic music grafted onto metal and, in any case, far more lighthearted. Still a vein heavily mined in the '90s and to this day, by bands like Ulver, Vintersorg, Otyg, Storm — sometimes with excellent results, other times with outcomes that are frankly laughable — it remains, at its root, a product of Bathory.

"Prologue/Twilight of the Gods/Epilogue" (14:02) is the mammoth suite that opens the album: the nostalgia with which Quorthon rails against the corruption and crookedness of modern times is mirrored in the music itself, which begins with an arpeggio that slowly unspools until it explodes into a vocal climax and a guitar solo, so superbly epic that one is left wondering how such a wealth of feeling can be conjured with such limited technical skill (although, to be fair, Quorthon's clean singing has markedly improved), before settling back down again. "Through Blood By Thunder" (6:15) is a riot of Viking choruses whose collective voice manages to fuse the tone of religious invocation with that of the war cry. On "Blood And Iron" (10:25) Quorthon takes on the role of the bard (or rather, the skald), singing of the origins of man and his dominion over the earth through legends passed down from father to son, doing so in an extremely natural and vivid way, free of didactic pretension: the mournful trudge of the opening acoustic guitar is something of a mirror for the whole album, torn between melancholy and pride.

Next come the fierce "Under The Runes" (6:00), "To Enter Your Mountain" (7:37) and "Bond of Blood" (7:35), the latter two rather monotonous and demanding, but nonetheless representative of Bathory's signature epic style. Business as usual, when set against the following "Hammerheart" (4:58), Quorthon's spiritual testament (and, sadly, we might add, his real one too). It is a genuine anthem, in the sense of music of a people ("folk"), rendered through the tools of classical music (the melody is a free reworking of the fourth movement, "Jupiter", from Holst's "The Planets"), an anthem to that "Nordland" to which Quorthon dedicated the concept behind the second chapter of his musical journey. Carried by one of his finest vocal performances, it bears, in its closing section, the signature of electric guitar, linking ancient and modern in a supreme timelessness.

After this impressive run, Quorthon falls victim to a considerable loss of inspiration, not so much for lack of ideas as for the difficulty of channeling those ideas into a style that no longer suits his personality or his convictions. He churns out, back to back, two tedious and grating thrash/black albums that come across as nothing more than pathetic rehashes: Requiem (1994) and Octagon (1995) simply cannot stand comparison with the contemporary (master)works of the black metal bands that Bathory itself had helped bring into the world (Emperor, Satyricon, Immortal, Enslaved).

Yet the Nordic spark burning within Bathory is far from extinguished, and Quorthon proves it in 1996 with a release that was as unexpected as it had long been dreamed of by fans. Blood On Ice (Black Mark, 1996) is a collection of splendid unreleased tracks recorded in the late Eighties (so before the Hammerheart turning point) and re-recorded for the occasion. But there's more: Blood On Ice is a bold concept album, rich in spoken-word passages, in which Quorthon takes on not just the role of storyteller but also that of myth-maker, tracing, against the backdrop of classic Norse legend, the coming-of-age journey (autobiographical?) of a legendary hero of his own creation.

Musically the album isn't revolutionary, but, beyond its consistently high quality, it's one of the most important records for understanding the evolution of Bathory's sound between 1988 and 1990: indeed, the work is marked by aggressive, grandiloquent tones that seem to recall 1980s epic metal (at times you could almost be listening to Manowar) more than the epic black metal of Blood Fire Death, confirming just how versatile this artist was. The more than fifty-three minutes of primitive music Quorthon offers us here are, once again, so far removed from any passing trend that the rough-hewn production comes across as a virtue (rumor has it that Quorthon, to simulate the sound of footsteps in the snow on the third track, used a lawnmower: forget Einsturzende Neubauten!), and they make the eleven tracks feel like a single unified whole, crowned by the colossal suite "The Revenge Of Blood On Ice" (9:52), an absolutely unique crescendo of pathos that helps make the album a mandatory stop in Bathory's discography.

Unfortunately, from this point on the Bathory project's contacts with the outside world become ever rarer, and it takes a while before we again find records played with real heart by Quorthon: they arrive six years after Blood On Ice, and they don't disappoint.

Nordland I (Black Mark, 2002) and Nordland II (Black Mark, 2003) represent the culmination of Bathory's sound: the tracks are very long, evocative, nostalgic for a time now gone, a time in which Quorthon chooses to take refuge, artistically and mentally, more than ever before, against a world that seems to do everything it can to disorient him and strip away the few points of reference he clings to - illusions, from nature to art, in which this eternal dreamer seeks shelter. Twenty single-themed tracks over which looms the titanic shadow of the narrator and protagonist of this saga.

The death of Thomas Forsberg, known as Quorthon, came suddenly, from a heart attack, on July 6, 2004, and shook an entire musical world that three years earlier had bid farewell to the father of death metal, Chuck Schuldiner. But while feeling sorry for ourselves over what has been lost, and over what Quorthon failed to achieve, is pointless, it is right instead to respond by learning from what Quorthon did accomplish, and by continuing down the path that he, together with many others, pointed out.

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