Black metal in the early 1990s was for many people the sole cultural voice of reason in an insane and unhealthy time. Its frank reverence of the natural world, red in tooth and claw, and its explicit repudiation of the death march of modern humanity gave it a fanatical cult following, particularly in Scandinavia. The commercialisation that left it watered down to worthless over-produced bands like Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth left a gap in many eager fans’ hearts, and reduced black metal from something to be respected, or even feared, to a mere joke, a sidenote in history.

With the continuing work of Summoning and Graveland, Beherit’s 2009 Engram album and, to a lesser extent, Burzum’s 2010 Belus, old stalwarts of the black metal scene gave us a glimpse into not only where the genre had been, but where it could have gone without becoming the hollow, lifeless cultural void of today. It is the artist’s belief that this vision should be followed.

Unhalig aims to be part of this rekindling of the proper intellectual and fierce romantic spirit that black metal once had, to remind the genre what it was like before imitators reduced it to an assembly line of beer and bullet belts. Its ultimate aim is to help furnish a new direction for black metal, well away from simplistic party or carnival music, and permanently dissociating it from the idiocy that presently plagues the genre.