In 2025, avant-garde black metal is nearly synonymous with dissonance. Acts like Blut Aus Nord and Imperial Triumphant assert that avant-garde black metal must draw from jazz and revel in darkness. It is, seemingly by default, hurdy-gurdy and esoteric. However, Steven Wiener from Am I In Trouble? asserts that this view is narrow-minded, though he’ll say it in kinder terms. His debut record under this moniker, Spectrum, is a revival of avant-garde black metal’s colorful side.
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Based in New Jersey, Am I In Trouble? is Wiener’s solo project aside from his other outfits, Ashenheart and Negative Bliss. Free to write and perform directly from his gut, he creates boisterous, melodic, and sincere black metal. He composes with every color available, globbing the columns of black metal architecture with greens and yellows. It’s an approach that was present in the early 2000s when Borknagar, Sigh, and Vintersorg were at their most active. Iron Maiden-esque melodies, layered clean vocals, guitar solos that radiate 80s neon lights, and a motherfucking flute are all here, acting in reverence of that which came long before them.
None of this is to say that the style Wiener holds so dear is lost to time. Far from it, as Dødheimsgard returned in 2023 with Black Medium Current to acclaim. But, as Wiener notes, there was an eight year gap between that record and its predecessor. Another pivotal band in the same camp, Arcturus, have gone a decade without releasing new music, only touring with their older material. And Wiener’s beloved Solefald have been silent since their last album in 2015. The genre’s pace has slowed down since its heyday, which is especially disappointing for Wiener because it was his entryway into metal.
Originally a punk rock fan, Wiener’s first exposure to metal came courtesy of a friend. Two pedestrian recommendations, ideal for anyone who couldn’t distinguish Sabbath from Priest; a Gorgoroth record (Wiener didn’t elaborate on which) and Arcturus’ Sham Mirrors. He says, “I knew ‘Enter Sandman’ just because it appears in TV shows and stuff, and somehow I knew one Blind Guardian song, but that was it. So, my idea of metal was already kind of strange because I listened to Kinetic by Arcturus and it just blew my mind.”
Following that, Wiener dove down a rabbit hole of cross referencing Arcturus-adjacent bands through their shared performers and locations. He did not, and to this day still doesn’t, consider this type of metal, as over-expressive as it is, strange. It’s simply what metal is to him. It is exuberant and brash, and, simultaneously, contemplative and curious. “Calling it a genre is so weird, like avant-garde metal, because it’s such a broad umbrella. Almost every band that gets labeled that way just does the things I like. It’s this completely open book approach to music, but still really focused on good songwriting and a really deep embrace of melody. I just knew I wanted to make something that kind of fit in that umbrella,” he adds.
The fervor with which he sought out what scratched his itch gave him a robust comprehension at the cost of familiarity with metal’s entry-level class. Wiener only started listening to Metallica last year (“Their guitar tones rule. I know I’m saying something a million other people have said before me, but I was so excited to see that myself first hand after so many years of only hearing about it peripherally.”). He’s also not well-versed in Maiden nor many marquee metal bands, including the poster child of blackgaze, Deafheaven.
“I never listened to any blackgaze. I wasn’t aware of it as a genre until like a year ago. I’m in so many weird bubbles inside my own head when it comes to metal. When I got into metal, I was so heavily fixated on the region of the world that all the bands I liked were from that, up until like two years ago, I barely even listened to any bands outside of Scandinavia. So, every US band, I just wasn’t even aware of. It’s crazy,” he admits.
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So, as much as Spectrum is informed by Wiener’s tastes, it’s also shaped by his blindspots. For instance, “Blue” could pass as an Iron Maiden tribute, until you listen to it and Sigh’s “Silver Universe” back-to-back. The melodies gleam too brightly to be indebted to Maiden. They lack the grit and opera. Accordingly, Wiener’s blindspots grant him a specific palette that’s dissimilar to anything outside his niche frame of reference rather than restricting him.
His other formative and niche interests that lay outside of metal widen that palette and upgrade Spectrum from fanfiction to artistic endearment. Bookends “Green” and “Yellow” both prominently feature the flute and draw from adventure video games like Chrono Trigger and Link’s Awakening. There are little mental gymnastics necessary to understand how video game soundtracks and black metal can coexist. After all, there’s an entire genre that takes that thought experiment beyond its logical conclusion.
The one that requires the largest logical hurdle to understand on paper is “Blue.” It, without any attempt at subtlety, is a tribute to F-Zero’s “Big Blue”; Captain Falcon’s theme song. Falcon, for those unaware, is a competitive racer in the far future who is also a bounty hunter, definitely best known for his Super Smash Bros. appearances. There’s not a chance anyone could make a black metal song about him that’d be “trve”.
Thus, Wiener doesn’t. He plainly references Sigh and their take on power metal, Gallows Gallery. The shmaltz and flames-erupting-from-a-guitar jolly are imbued into “Blue” in a manner that would repulse a Profanatica devotee. But “Blue,” more than any other track on Spectrum, is a skeleton key that reveals how much of black metal’s history has been distorted and retrofitted to its most controversial acts; how its most depraved offerings have been heralded as the only true black metal when that was never the case even during the 90s explosion. Sure, “Blue” sounds nothing like Emperor or Darkthrone or Marduk or whoever, but neither do many of the other bands Wiener draws from who existed within the black metal space at that time. Vintersong, Arcturus, Sigh, Borknagar, Solefad, Dodheimsgard, Kvist, Ved Buens Ende were all active and involved with black metal and all fell far outside the norm, to the point that they stretched black metal’s definition until a new subgenre had to be created to house them.
There’s nothing metal loves more than spawning new subgenres. When Dissection began inserting overtly melodic guitar lines into black metal, it was time for melodic black metal to distinguish itself as its own entity. However, Dissection’s small steps outside of the black metal framework are minute at best when compared to the music Wiener discussed, even down to how the two camps implement melody. As he puts it, “There’s this whole other side to the avant-garde umbrella that’s just so embracing of melody. I talk constantly about Lars Nedland because, and he doesn’t market himself this way, but he’s like a through line through 30 years of avant garde metal, you know, Solefald started in 1995. And I can’t think of anyone who was singing like him back then.”
Which is all to say that melody is not the single distinguishing factor for what is or isn’t black metal, nor are clean vocals, otherwise Ulver’s Bergtatt would be heretical. There’s obviously a point where music no longer belongs to a certain genre, much like how there’s a point in the color wheel where orange is no longer red, but finding that specific node is nigh impossible. Melody and clean vocals, though often disposed of within black metal, can be integral pieces, as Spectrum presents.
Wiener employs traditional harsh vocals alongside cleans that are mixed to be as prominent as the guitars. On “White,” they’re dense with harmony and, crucially, at peace despite being at odds with the song’s avant-black core. It’s an approach Wiener traces back to his influences, “So many of my favorite vocalists just don’t hold back. They do whatever they need to do to make the vocals sound the way they want it to sound and whether that’s layers of the same vocal stacked on top of itself just to give it more presence or having like some four part harmony going on behind the vocal.”
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Like many artistic directions, Wiener’s vision for Spectrum came not from an ideology but from the gut. This style, to him, has everything he wants. For some people, it feels put on, but for others, it flows outwards without conscious thought. Wiener explains the difference as such: “There are certain bands, and this isn’t a knock against them, like Stolen Babies. They’re weird. Their zaniness did feel performative, but, deliberately so. They’re very much like that circus aesthetic. Whereas, like, Sigh, no matter what they do, it feels so grounded in its weirdness.”
Spectrum is similarly grounded, perhaps because Wiener’s vocals possess traces of frailty that makes them more genuine, or because it’s at times so over-the-top that you realize it can’t be fake, similar to how those who run at half speed to catch a bus look sillier than those who sprint–commitment begets elegance. While black metal is often about turning away and rebellion, there’s also rebellion through creating music that asks that you accept it on its terms. That demands you take its corniness and lofty ideas and its meandering away from genre tags to absorb it as it is. If you can’t handle it, you’re part of the out group–you’re a poser. And black metal has no time for posers.
Wiener, of course, is far too warm to put that attitude forward. This album was entirely for him, albeit with one asterisk. “Pink” was written by his wife about Kirby, and it belongs on Spectrum just as much as anything else, and not just because it details how horrifying the pink puffball’s existence is. Put another way, where black metal invokes Satan and winter to meet its ends, Wiener finds the fear and wonder in less jagged territory. The world is rife with inspiration, so long as you pay attention to what others have overlooked.
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Spectrum is available now via Bandcamp. Vinyls are available via Bölverk Collective while supplies last.
