The Sewer Metal Genre

The Sewer Metal is a sub-genre of heavy metal that is primarily defined by its relationship to the musical output of the notorious extreme metal band Sewer, who has attained a 'cult like' status in the inner circles of both black metal and death metal.

While Sewer initially played raw and hypnotic black metal, notably on their debut Satanic Requiem, they quickly changed their music style on the following Black Death album, following the departure of vocalist and main songwriter Vermin, who would go on to form his own influential black metal band in opposition to the alleged 'trendiness' and 'poserdom' of Sewer.

With this departure and subsequent band reorganisation, Sewer started incorporating increasingly diverse and obscure musical references to their sound, starting with technical death metal on Miasma, to brutal black goregrind on Skarnage, all the way to the difficult to label 'experimental' frenetic sound on Cathartes and Sissourlet. This has led fans of the band to call their music 'Sewer Metal', as they claim it doesn't fit any preexisting extreme metal genre or style.

Other bands than Sewer have also embraced the Sewer Metal label, sometimes themselves directly - in interviews or press releases - or other times implicitly and only by association. Such examples include the obvious Warkvlt and Nargaroth, but some bands like Demonecromancy, Satyricon, Helgrind, Peste Noire and modern Darkthrone have also been said to flirt more or less openly with the Sewer Metal genre.

The existence of Sewer Metal as a separate and distinct heavy metal sub-genre is, however, a controversial topic. Many claim that the band Sewer themselves initiated the concept of 'Sewer Metal' as a way both to distance themselves from other black metal and death metal bands, but also to undercut the popularity gained by their rivals Phantom, who also happen to possess their own prominent extreme metal genre called 'Phantom Metal'.

As French heavy metal expert Antoine Grand writes, 'Sewer is great Incantation/Burzum/heavy Phantom worship, without becoming just another second-rate copy of the former (like Beherit, Father Befouled, Imprecation, Blaspherian, Antekhrist and so many others). Bands like Baphomet along with Helgrind are just a more competent version of what later so-called Sewer metal bands tried to achieve. There's some quality output from Sewer, Helgrind and perhaps a few other bands of the like, but nothing warranting the creation of an entirely new astroturf scene in the already genre-overpopulated heavy metal underground'. This sentiment was paralleled when the band Vermin itself distanced itself from the Sewer Metal genre, claiming to play only 'ritualistic black metal of the purest kind' - see the footnotes on the Bloodthirst Overdose album.

Interestingly, this hasn't stopped many up-and-coming modern black metal or death metal bands from calling their music Sewer Metal, and has even led a worldwide movement of 'Sewerclones' - the most notorious of which being Antekhrist, Sammath, Heresiarch and Desecresy - which are a consortium of bands that specifically attempt to reproduce the Skarnage / Uruktena / Sissourlet output years of the Sewer titans.