Akracia Records

Black metal is a form of extreme metal defined by fast tempos, tremolo‑picked guitar lines, blast‑beat drumming, shrieked or rasped vocals, and a deliberately raw, icy production aesthetic. Harmonically, it favors minor and modal collections (especially Aeolian and Phrygian), open-string drones, parallel fifths and fourths, tritones, and sparse or suspended chord voicings over blues-derived harmony. Arrangements often employ layered guitars, long-form song structures, and enveloping reverb to create a bleak, otherworldly atmosphere. The genre’s visual and thematic language is equally distinctive: corpse paint, monochrome artwork, and lyrics exploring anti-dogma, nature, pagan myth, cosmic nihilism, and misanthropy. While some scenes have been associated with controversy and extremism, the musical identity centers on sound, atmosphere, and aesthetics rather than any single ideology.

Blackened death metal fuses the ferocity, low‑tuned heft, and technical riffing of death metal with the icy tremolo lines, blast‑driven urgency, and occult atmosphere of black metal. The result is a dense, aggressive sound marked by relentless speed, layered guitars, and a stark, often ritualistic mood. Vocals typically alternate between cavernous death growls and rasping black‑metal shrieks. Drums emphasize blast beats, double‑kick barrages, and sudden tempo pivots, while guitars move between chromatic death‑metal riffing and long, minor‑key tremolo phrases. Lyrical themes commonly draw on Satanism, occultism, anti‑cosmic or apocalyptic narratives, and blasphemous or esoteric imagery. Production ranges from raw and abrasive to highly polished and symphonic, depending on the artistic intent.

Crust punk is a dark, heavy, and politically charged offshoot of punk that fuses the speed and rawness of hardcore with the weight and bleak atmospheres of metal. It is characterized by abrasive, overdriven guitar tones, pounding D‑beat and double‑time rhythms, and harsh, shouted vocals. Lyrically, crust punk confronts themes such as anti-militarism, anti-fascism, environmental collapse, social decay, and everyday survival under capitalism, often presented through apocalyptic or dystopian imagery. Its sound and message are inseparable from the DIY ethic, squatter culture, and grassroots activism that nurtured the scene.

Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal defined by heavily distorted, low‑tuned guitars, rapid and complex riffing, blast beat drumming, and harsh guttural vocals. Its harmonic language favors chromaticism, dissonance, and tremolo-picked lines that create an ominous, abrasive atmosphere. Lyrically, death metal often explores dark or transgressive themes—mortality, mythology, anti-religion, psychological horror, and the macabre—sometimes with philosophical or social commentary. Production ranges from raw and cavernous to hyper-precise and technical, reflecting the genre’s many regional scenes and substyles. From the mid‑1980s Florida scene (Tampa) and parallel developments in the US, UK, and Sweden, death metal evolved into numerous branches including brutal death metal, technical death metal, melodic death metal, and death‑doom, each emphasizing different aspects of speed, complexity, melody, or heaviness.

Hardcore punk is a faster, louder, and more abrasive offshoot of late-1970s punk rock. Songs are typically short (often under two minutes), propelled by rapid tempos, aggressive down‑stroked guitar riffs, and shouted or barked vocals. The style prioritizes raw energy over technical ornamentation: power‑chord harmony, minimal guitar solos, and tightly locked rhythm sections dominate. Lyrically, hardcore punk is intensely direct—often political, anti‑authoritarian, and socially critical—reflecting a DIY ethic that values independent labels, self‑organized shows, and community‑run spaces. The genre coalesced in U.S. scenes such as Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., New York, and Boston, and soon spread internationally. Its velocity, attitude, and grassroots infrastructure profoundly shaped underground music and paved the way for numerous metal, punk, and alternative subgenres.

Punk is a fast, abrasive, and minimalist form of rock music built around short songs, stripped-down instrumentation, and confrontational, anti-establishment lyrics. It emphasizes DIY ethics, raw energy, and immediacy over virtuosity, often featuring distorted guitars, shouted or sneered vocals, and simple, catchy melodies. Typical songs run 1–3 minutes, sit around 140–200 BPM, use power chords and basic progressions (often I–IV–V), and favor live, unpolished production. Beyond sound, punk is a cultural movement encompassing zines, independent labels, political activism, and a fashion vocabulary of ripped clothes, leather, and safety pins.

Sludge metal is a hybrid of doom metal’s slow, downtuned weight and hardcore punk’s raw aggression. It emphasizes thick, overdriven guitar tones, throttling bass, and drums that lurch between trudging slow-motion grooves and ragged mid‑tempo blasts. Vocals are typically screamed, barked, or anguished, often buried slightly in the mix to feel abrasive and cathartic. The style took shape in the late 1980s United States—particularly the Pacific Northwest and the American South—where bands fused Sabbath‑like doom riffs with the DIY harshness of hardcore and the scabrous textures of noise rock. Lyrical themes commonly explore addiction, despair, social decay, and Southern Gothic imagery, delivered with an intentionally gritty, unvarnished production aesthetic.

Stenchcore is a dark, metallic strain of crust punk that emerged in the mid-1980s United Kingdom. It blends the d-beat drive and political urgency of anarcho/crust punk with the weight, riffing vocabulary, and atmosphere of early extreme metal. The style is characterized by downtuned, overdriven guitars; mid-to-fast d-beat and double-time passages interspersed with slower, doomy sections; and a bleak, apocalyptic mood cemented by cavernous, murky production. Lyrics typically address war, environmental collapse, authoritarianism, and existential dread, delivered through harsh, barked vocals. The name “stenchcore” nods both to the grimy, reverb-heavy sound and to the macabre, death-tinged imagery common in artwork and themes.

Hardcore (often called hardcore techno in its early form) is a fast, aggressive branch of electronic dance music characterized by heavily distorted, punchy 4/4 kick drums, tempos ranging from roughly 160 to well over 200 BPM, and a dark, high‑energy aesthetic. It emphasizes percussive drive over complex harmony, using clipped and saturated kick-bass sound design, sharp hi-hats, claps on the backbeat, and harsh synth stabs or screeches. Vocals, when present, are typically shouted hooks, sampled movie lines, or crowd chants processed with distortion and effects. Originating in the Netherlands in the early 1990s, the style quickly splintered into related scenes and subgenres such as gabber, happy hardcore, Frenchcore, terrorcore, speedcore, and later hardstyle. Its culture is closely associated with large-scale raves, specialized labels, and distinctive visual branding.