Occult rock is older than people think. The 1969 debut by Chicago band Coven, Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls, predates Black Sabbath’s first record by a few months and contains the first use of the inverted sign of the horns on an album cover. That record set the template. Female-led, organ-heavy, theatrical, drawing equally on hippie psychedelia and a darker edge that nobody quite had a name for yet.
The modern wave
The 2000s revival took the original 1970s sound and added modern production. The Netherlands produced The Devil’s Blood, one of the most musically ambitious occult rock acts of the decade, before guitarist and songwriter Selim Lemouchi’s death in 2014. Sweden gave us Ghost, who took the visual theatre to arena scale. Finland’s Jess and the Ancient Ones built a similar template into psychedelic territory. Canada’s Blood Ceremony added flute. What unifies the modern wave is a refusal to treat the occult content as kitsch. The bands take it seriously. The audience takes it seriously. The result is a scene that sits uneasily between traditional metal and indie rock, claimed by both, owned by neither.
Why now
Occult rock is one of the few subgenres where European bands consistently outperform American counterparts. The Devil’s Blood and Ghost set the modern bar. If the sound interests you, start with The Thousandfold Epicentre (The Devil’s Blood) and work backwards.