Tormentor's (Gorgoroth) Top 5 Black Metal Moments

Posted November 24 by Chris D.

We asked Gorgoroth's Tormentor to give us Top 5 Black Metal Moments. He pondered a bit -- recognizing all the significant contributions to black metal from his native country of Norway -- and presented us with this list. While we can't attest for long defunct, much-revered Helvete -- it was a hair salon when I visited Olso in 2003 -- or Darkthrone performing live (!) at Elm Street, his list shows where Tormentor's tastes are. In violent, uncompromising black metal. Blasphemy? Von? And the legendary Bathory? All superlative. Enjoy the vids and images. You can thank Tormentor when you see him.

5. Rediscovering the brilliance of Blasphemy's Fallen Angel of Doom.

I remember when this album was released. Together with Beherit, they were on the frontline when it came to a more chaotic kind of black metal. For some reason I didn't listen to it for about 10 years. Anyway, the intensity and outstanding attitude of this album is in a league of its own.

4.The Helvete catalogue and everything related to Euronymous, Mayhem and Dead.
Late ‘80s/early ‘90s, Mayhem brought loads of grimness to a scene not that wasn’t brutal anymore. Ugly live shows, brutal music, ideological and political madness, suicide, Satan, etc., culminating in the birth of Helvete, the ultimate little black metal shop for diehards.

3. When I got the news about a second VON demo.
Being a big VON fan for many years—because of the ultimate black metal demo Satanic Blood—I was utterly surprised when Infernus informed me about a long forgotten second demo that was recorded right after Satanic Blood but never released! That doesn't happen very often.

2. The first time I heard Bathory’s Under the Sign of the Black Mark.
This was the first Bathory album I got. And it disturbed my picture of what black and extreme metal was. Thrash and death was hard and fast, but this stuff was way more evil and ugly. Still melodic somehow. This album (together with Bathory's first two) was in a dimension that is rarely heard elsewhere. A milestone in metal for sure.

1. Darkthrone live at Elm Street, Oslo, in 1991. I think.
This was one of a very few shows from the mighty Darkthrone. Norwegian black metal live was rarely experienced back then. Mayhem had done some gigs (i.e., the legendary and infamous live in Gjessheim show), but anyways, this was rather unique. Darkthrone was for sure the darkest of them. All at the time.

** Gorgoroth's new album Quantos Possunt Ad Satanitatem Trahunt is out now. The grimmest of the grim can find it here.

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