– 1982 –
Thought they would ultimately become known as one of the Big Three of German thrash, Sodom began life as musically undisciplined Venom acolytes, the dubious rhythm-keeping and Tom Angelripper's seething vocals acting as a sort of bridge between Welcome to Hell and later Bathory. Slow to transition to official releases, 1982 still saw Sodom firmly in demo mode, although that demo already shows a band taking thrash to the next level less than a year after Venom debuted.
Let's be frank about one thing here: the influence of Mercyful Fate on black metal has always been more about the themes and pageantry than about the music. You can draw a direct bead between King Diamond's first, Deep Purple-influenced, band Black Rose…
… and Mercyful Fate and there's one consideration necessary: the NWOBHM. Sure, Fate are a bit more sped up than the likes of Diamond Head or Angel Witch, but the specter of 70's blues rock filtered through a punk mentality that characterized the NWOBHM genre as a whole is omnipresent throughout Fate's career, and at no point did they really even aspire to full blown thrash, let alone anything approaching the sound of contemporary black metal.
Nonetheless, by 1982 standards the imagery was pretty extreme, instantly rendering an already washed up Alice Cooper thoroughly obsolete as well as exposing just how tongue-in-cheek corny Venom was in their own schtick. The four-song Mercyful Fate EP certainly set the tone in terms of menacing atmosphere, if not completely abandoning such "rockist" concepts as melody and guitar solos.
Lastly, it wouldn't be a year in the 80's without an appearance by the ever-prolific Venom, who closed out 1982 by releasing Black Metal in November. Now, a lot of fans swear up and down that this is hands down the first example of true BM, but if you ask me they're getting a little too hung up on the album title. Sure, it deserves consideration as much as anything else cited up to this point in time, but it seems more useful to consider this a link in the chain than a firm starting point.
There's still too much of an unapologetic Motörhead groove present, and God only knows that if there was anything the later Norwegian bands were trying to expunge from extreme metal once and for all, it was things like "groove". Nonetheless, the replacement of warmth and emotion with pure hatred and disgust continues along its asymptotic path with Cronos getting even more unhinged than usual on classic Venom track, "Countess Bathory":
