Burzum

Filosofem
Misanthropy, 1996

This isn't the usual rock 'n' roll fairytale: not unattractive young man joins popular metal group, hangs out at record store named Hell, frowns upon fucking large-breasted groupies, takes part in razing several churches, stabs lead guitarist in the head, goes to jail as a cult celebrity and passes time writing anthologies of Nordic mythological figures.

The band was Mayhem, one of the Scandinavian groups who pioneered black metal. Their lead singer, named Dead, killed himself in 1991 and left a note which read "excuse all the blood". Two years later, guitarist Oystein Aarseth was murdered by one-time bassist Varg Vikernes, who had an equally influential solo project called Burzum (which means "darkness" in the fictional orc language of Vikernes's favourite author, J R R Tolkien). Despite mainstream media reports at the time, Vikernes wasn't a Satanist but an eccentric, intelligent and extremely racist Pagan historian with a violent background.

Filosofem was released after Aarseth's murder and Vikernes's arrest, between three earlier, heavier albums and two electronic ambient records made in a prison cell. For someone with such vicious capabilities, Vikernes described it in serene terms as "monotonous, uncomplicated and melancholic". There's some truth in that, if you can hear past the noise. During the first listen, 'Dunkleheit' sounds like an 70-piece orchestra playing chainsaws. But once the volume reaches critical mass, a simple, rain-droplet melody and a pulse like a slowed-down heartbeat rise from the din. Vikernes said he intended Burzum to be "evening music" and for people to fall asleep while listening to it.

Burzum's influence stemmed from Vikernes's mystical, anti-mainstream beliefs as much as from the music. In short, he thought very little of capitalism, consumerism, liberalism and black people and dreamed about the downfall of Christianity and a return to lost Pagan values. After the media "sensationalised" the sorry chain of events in the Norwegian black metal scene – as if 40 burnt churches, two murders and some suicides needed much exaggeration – Vikernes announced the end of Burzum so people would stop writing about him. He's due to be released from jail in the next few months.

Tom Waits

Bone Machine
Island, 1992

When an album opens with something called 'Earth Died Screaming', and it sounds like a homeless man playing glockenspiel on a skeleton's rib cage, you know you're in for an interesting ride. The story behind it is even stranger than the result. Inspired by pygmy 'stick orchestras', the noise simulating a pile of chalky bones was made when the singer gathered a collection of strangers in the car park outside his studio and had them knock together lengths of 2 x 4. It was recorded on a prototype of an extremely early keyboard sampler, the Chamberlain 2000, made circa 1960, which ran in part on a bicycle chain.

Like that of Dylan or Bowie, Tom Waits' audience spans a wide range of ages – but an even wider range of subcultures. He began performing in the 1970s as a vagabond, gravel-throated lounge singer who told romantic stories about drunks and hookers. Then, in the early 1980s, after dumping his manager, producer and record label (or perhaps the other way around), he reinvented himself with the colourful and carnivalesque Swordfishtrombones, the first of a three-part trilogy and the best of his albums so far. On the cover, he posed as a blush-soaked dandy, wearing suspenders and leopard-skin gloves tucked into his belt.

Bone Machine was Waits' first studio album of the 1990s, after five years spent working in film and theatre. It marked the third, most experimental phase of his career. He described it, to the few journalists he would talk to, as a collection of songs about death, suicide and the end of the world, strung together like vertebrae. One of the unusual instruments used on the album was the Conundrum, a spinning wheel with various types of metal custom-made for Waits by a motorcycle mechanic down the road. But bleak as it is, Bone Machine holds its share of jokes. Its very blackest moment, 'Dirt In The Ground', was inspired by a pick-up line his friend used to ply on girls in hotel lobbies: "Babe, why don’t you come up to my room? After all, one day we're all going to be just..."

Vapourware

Vapourdoublebeatsdeluxe
Oracle, 1999

Before MSN there was IRC. It stood for Internet Relay Chat, a multi-user, real-time chat protocol based around 'channels' of interest (#melbourne, #grunge, #sonic_youth, etc) still in use here and there by nostalgic porn addicts and the socially inept. As a teenager in the mid and late 1990s, stuck in the cultural void of Newcastle, my pop music decisions were informed largely by the chatter in #industrial.

The people I met there – three of whom are still close friends ten years later – were a few years older and their tales of Sydney gigs and goth clubs inspired intense jealously. One guy had a band called Vapourware, who gigged at The Iron Duke in Alexandria. On the nights they played, the channel would be empty. I'd sometimes linger there alone or with the few Brisbane kids, listening to tracks people had sent me. At the time, MP3s still took about an hour to download, and much longer through decrepit suburban phone cables and a cheap 33.6k modem. I treasured the Vapourware tracks on my computer as much as rare KMFDM and Nine Inch Nails remixes.

By the time I moved to Redfern in late 2000, one suburb from The Iron Duke, the band had disappeared, leaving behind only two EPs. For all the marks of its time – hidden tracks, Coke vs. Pepsi references, a Quicktime interface for PC users, angst – Vapourdoublebeatsdeluxe didn't age too badly. 'Comfort' mixes a huge rock and roll chorus with a dance beat heavy on computer effects and added static. The explosive 'Biochemical' (at least I think that's what it's called, it's one of the hidden tracks) remains the most jarring. It stuffs an impressive amount of outrage into just 1 minute and 23 seconds. "Hey... I like your STYLE!," is the opening line, followed with a hoarse, uncontrolled rant about pretty, rich people. "I wanna be like you, I wanna look bored!" someone screams over the racket. "I know who you are! I can tell by the clothes that you wear!" Played loud, it sounds like freefalling through noise. I never got to see them live.

The Birthday Party

Prayers On Fire
Shock, 1981

It seems fitting to revisit Nick Cave's early work in the week his nostalgic side-project Grinderman is released. Prayers On Fire was The Birthday Party's first album, though the same musicians had released Door, Door as Boys Next Door two years earlier. The change of name heralded an even darker and trashier aesthetic. Their two albums, plus a handful of EPs, were enough to ensure long-lasting notoriety and a slew of releases more than a decade after their demise, including a facetiously titled best-of compilation Hits, the John Peel Sessions and Live, 1981-1982.

It would be easy to emphasise the contrast between the Cave of late, whetting housewives with sappy, inoffensive tracks like 'Into My Arms', and the young, middle-class malcontent who snarled unmentionables in the '80s. But there's a link between them in Cave's adulation of idolised females, even if the poor girl/object usually winds up mutilated in The Birthday Party version. On 'Zoo-Music Girl', Cave seems to mean the same thing when he wails "I kiss the hem of her skirt", and then, "I murder her dress!"

While the band's revered tracks are usually their noisiest – 'Blast Off', 'Big Jesus Trash Can' – they were particularly creative when experimenting with piano and saxophone. 'Dive Position', from Door, Door, is nerve-jangling with horror-movie piano and a shrill, inhuman voice which echoes the title in the verses. Prayers On Fire closes with 'Kathy's Kisses', a clomping, off-kilter song with only three repeated lines and a manic saxophone. Even without Cave's degenerate lyrics, it sounds like a well-behaved pop melody that woke up to find itself drunk and staggering through the red-light district. It foreshadowed the carnival-blues style Tom Waits would pursue a few years later.

The Birthday Party's mythology was underscored by their live shows, which, going by accounts from the time, were fairly unhinged. Clinton Walker includes a good description of their smack-soaked nights at St Kilda's Crystal Ballroom in his book Stranded. His account is part of the story of early '80s Melbourne, but the real beauty of Prayers On Fire and Junkyard is that they're so unique it's hard to recognise them in terms of time or place.