Heard a lot of people recommending the new album! I’m actually thinking about catching them on tour this Sunday.

is this band sketch? i know a lot of tanzelcore has an issue with nazis and shit so i just wanna make sure to kinow whether or not this one is too, so i can take them off my pants if so

There are a few widely circulated spreadsheets -- e.g. this one -- of sketch in black metal bands that I see cited and shared in communities like this one sometimes. It is not very good. You should be cautious using it and similar crowdpooled resources, which are often incomplete and inaccurate. I’ll give you three examples here—Archgoat, Cultes Des Ghoules, and Ride for Revenge—each illustrating a different point.

First, what prompted this post was viewing the latest rendition of the spreadsheet linked above and noticing that Archgoat was listed as only “mildly sketchy” with the following explanation: “The band has released a split with NSBM act Satanic Warmaster. In an interview, guitarist Ritual Butcherer stated that he thinks that ‘white supremacism is as dumb as it gets’ and brought up that the black metal scene was pioneered by non-Caucasian bands from places such as South America.”

One could debate whether collaboration with Satanic Warmaster constitutes “mild” sketch or worse. But that isn’t my aim here. Instead, I want to note that the creators of the spreadsheet missed the longstanding, documented friendship and collaboration between “Lord Angelsayer” of Archgoat and Sami Tenetz, who plays live with Goatmoon and runs the Kvlt Records operation and store, with sub-labels Hammer of Hate and No Sign of Life—all three of which release NSBM and NSBM-adjacent stuff. Sami Tenetz also has a large swastika tattoo on his torso, which is visible in videos of him playing guitar live with Goatmoon at the Asgardsrei festival in 2018. He and Lord Angelslayer are bandmates in Thy Serpent, which has released a split with Goatmoon and Wolfnacht. The two can be found in photographs hanging out with each other, along with members of bands like Circle of Dawn, Horna, Mikko Aspa, and other notorious Finnish boneheads. Finally, videos of Archgoat performing live show that Lord Angelslayer has a large black sun tattoo on his right shoulder (and this despite being half Sri Lankan, which, yeah, I don’t quite understand, but there it is). The general lesson: a spreadsheet declaring a band “mildly sketch” doesn’t mean much at all. It might be highly inaccurate.

Second, judgments of sketchiness can also be too severe, inaccurate in the other direction. As far as I can tell, this is exactly the case with the band Cultes Des Ghoules. They are listed as moderately sketchy—more than Archgoat—because of a split with Satanic Warmaster and “releasing a record on an NSBM label.” But Archgoat have also released a split with Satanic Warmaster, as the spreadsheet itself notes. And this is an exhaustive list of all labels Cultes Des Ghoules has worked with: Under the Sign of Garazel Productions, Enochian Tongues, Agonia Records, Hells Headbangers Records, Of Crawling Shadows Records, Metalhit, Terratur Possessions, Malignant Voices, and End All Life Productions. Not a one of those can with anything like a straight face actually be called “an NSBM label.” The closest two are Metalhit and End All Life. Let’s start with the former, which has released records by Arghoslent and Grand Bell’s Key in addition to hundreds of records by 100% apolitical bands like Acid Witch. No one is going to call a band that releases goofy Halloween-themed death metal records sketchy because their massive label with hundreds of artists has also released <10 records by genuinely horrible bands that have nothing to do with Acid Witch. Why treat Cultes Des Ghoules differently? Now for the latter, End All Life, they also release a lot of distasteful and sketchy shit. But they, too, release records by bands who clearly have nothing to do with NS stuff: Drastus, Slidhr, Kathaaria (main dude plays drums for Ruins of Beverast, ruled “Safe” by the spraadhseet in question), S.V.E.S.T., Sabbat. The judgement against Cultes Des Ghoules seems totally unprincipled. Even if one disagrees and wants to stretch concepts to the breaking point by calling these labels “NSBM labels,” Archgoat would come out even worse than CdG in the resulting wash, having released music with Debemur Morti Productions (alongside Akhlys), InCoffin Productions (alongside Diocletian, Inquisition, and Satanic Warmaster), Hells Headbangers (alongside, well, Cultes Des Ghoules, if we’re playing that game), Moribund Records (alongside Arghoslent, Grand Belial’s Key, Horna, Seges Findere—an actual straight-up 100% undeniable NSBM band, unlike most others mentioned here—), Osmose (alongside Hate Forest, Nokturnal Mortal), and Hammer of Hate (owned by Sami Tenetz, as described above, releasing music from Satanic Warmaster, Nattfog, Sielunvihollinen, White Rune….).

Finally, spreadsheets are necessarily incomplete. You might look up a band, see that they aren’t included, and judge that they must be fine. You’d be wrong. Take Ride for Revenge, an important band in the Finnish black metal underground who are notably completely absent from the spreadsheet. It is important to note that the main man behind Goatmoon, “Blackgoat Gravedesecrator”—real name Jaakko Lähde—has regularly performed live vocals for RfR, including at earlier renditions of Steelfest shows and other smaller festivals going back to 2012. Moreover, RfR’s main man, “Harald Mentor”—real name Sami Kettunen—has regularly played live bass for Goatmoon, including on the “Live at Manalan Yö III” recording released in 2014, a recording of a 2014 show called “Manalan Yö V” that actually took place in 2011. You can see the, ahem, decor the band felt it appropriate to play in front of in the picture used for the cover of that release. You can find videos of live performances in 2012 and 2014 shows in the “Manalan Yö” series on BitChute and Odyssey (Manalan Yö IV and Manalan Yö V). In 2014, RfR played alongside Goatmoon, sharing members between sets—although the swastika flags were tastefully folded up before RfR started, for whatever reason. Videos of Goatmoon playing live with Harald Mentor on bass date back to 2010 or so. He can be seen playing directly in front of sieg heiling crowd members. You’d be mistaken to think RfR are not sketchy because they didn’t make it onto the spreadsheet (and, frankly, even a cursory look at the metal archives wouldn’t help too much; this took some real digging on my part to figure out exactly the extent of Harald Mentor’s involvement in Goatmoon).

The general point I’m driving at here is that you should be careful relying on others to look into things for you and leaning too hard on spreadsheets and similar resources going around if you want to discern whether a band is sketchy. Claims can be inaccurate, relationships can be unclear, and important facts can be omitted entirely.

(An additional but separate complaint: it’s not clear what standards guide the assignment of sketch values to bands. Thorns are listed as moderately sketchy because they’ve worked with Hellhammer and the main man once had some affinity for Varg Vikernes. By my lights, those things are bad, yes, but less bad than actively collaborating with a central figure of the Finnish NSBM ecosystem and having Nazi tattoos, like Lord Angelsayer does—yet his project is listed as less sketchy… Similarly for Naas Alcmeth related projects like Nightbringer and Akhlys. Yes, he is clearly a right-wing bigot, but quoting Evola in one’s lyrics and posting offensive racist boomer memes on Facebook are quite different from, again, collaborating with a known Nazi and having a Nazi tattoo, yet Naas Alcmaeth’s projects are labeled full-on “Nazi”—not even just moderately or highly sketchy—while Archgoat is “mildly” sketchy.)

I looked thru the sub already, found one post that basically just mentions it and that's it. How someone could have a split with both Bizarre Uproar and Mumia Abu Jamal 3 years later is beyond me. Been bumping mitb casually for like 15 years now but never ran into this split before. I'm a black person and I've had the pleasure of opening for Sissy Spacek several times and obviously John was nothing but kind and welcoming, so this isn't supposed to be any sort of indictment, genuinely just looking for context for how this came about.

https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Catamenia/557

They're following my page on FB for some reason (I play kosmische/experimental ambient, for heaven's sake), and I don't want to follow them back if they're fash.

https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/ironvows/a-hundred-thousand-knights

Wanting to know if Crypt of Kerberos is sketch? Found this album and really loved it.

https://pulverised.bandcamp.com/album/world-of-myths

Wanted to know if those bands are sketch. I did research and found that Zemial tours with Absu now (which is a shame from what I heard) but also has ties to Rotting Christ and Varathron (which is good). Agatus shares the same member with Zemial. Anybody know something more about those bands?

https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Zemial/934

https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Agatus/935

I Like this a lot, is it somewhat Sketch? Looks Like normal Basic black Metal with some medieval occultism thrown in but wo knows.

https://youtu.be/mtTXYItM9ns?is=pwho3hFnlmwua5FO

https://www.kristailer.com

EDIT - Thank you to those who replied, and to Gilgareth for the personal answer! No offense, accusation, or aspersion was meant whatsoever by this post.

Totem Wilds - https://totemwilds.bandcamp.com/music - They have published one of Paladin’s albums; Paladin does this thing called “wizard disco,” which while very much not doom n’ gloom black metal-y at all, clearly grew out of Dungeon Synth.

Consider this a question re: Paladin as well - https://mildperil.bandcamp.com/album/quest A lot of his stuff seems to be under Mild Peril in the UK. I think he’s covered some of Gilgareth’s stuff as well, judging by one of his related album covers on Bandcamp.

Dungeontroll - https://dungeontroll.bandcamp.com/

Gilgareth - https://gilgareth.bandcamp.com/

Quest Master - https://questmaster.bandcamp.com/

Thank you in advance for any clarification/info on these. Any solid “dungeon synth sketch lists” in general would be appreciated as well!

I've been wondering about them for a while now, they are on Iron Bonehead, a label that indiscriminately also releases sketchy stuff, but I have recently noticed they are playing festivals with bands like Rană, and Mantar, who are openly antifascist, and other leftist adjacent bands. Anyone know more?

according to metal archives they sing about nationalism and american midwest.

any of you know something more about?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asX8WZjuQP0&t=992s

Are they sketch? I know a lot of warnoise is sketch but would be good to know about these guys.

Ive heard some nasty stuff about them, like being friends with the members of absurd. Just wanted to double check that here.

I recently discovered Keys to the Astral Gates and Mystic Doors and love the music, they're represented by Empty Pit Recordings.

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I'm new to the genre and don't quite know how to spot the warning signs yet, and I don't want to accidentally support far right acts. I can't really find any info on the band and info on the record label is limited too. Are they sketch?

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i've seen some weird disscussions about Virus West cover. but i couldn't find any proper information

I really like this band and their image based on live videos Ive seen but I have to know if they’re sketch. While this wont stop me from listening, I need to know if they deserve my financial support. If they are, I wont give them a single penny.

https://darkenednocturnslaughtercult.bandcamp.com/?search_item_id%3D2252561601%26search_item_type%3Db%26search_match_part%3D%253F%26search_page_id%3D5478396550%26search_page_no%3D0%26search_rank%3D2

In the song "Incinerator" he says "the holocaust is nothing compared to the disintegrator" do they agree with the holocaust?
https://youtu.be/08EVewJA8jM?si=RhGKsjYfYdZPiBLh

I found one or two comments Here and there that claimed the Label is Safe, but If anyone could confirm that that would be nice

https://naturmacht.com/category/news/

Recently got into their stuff, really dig the sound and wanted to make sure they weren’t sketch.

honesty i've been listening to them for so long and i've never seen anyone who listens to them too. i couldn't find any info about them apart from wikipedia.

So I found a tanzelcore artist that someone recommended me and I really like them but one of their songs has a sound bite that says something in German about Adolf hitler. I don’t speak German so I can’t tell if it’s sketch or not. Anyone have any leads

https://glockenschlag.bandcamp.com/album/demo

Its the last song on this album at the very end