Black Metal Music Guide: A Brief History of Black Metal

Black metal is a subgenre of heavy metal music that emerged from the elements of extreme metal, such as thrash metal and death metal, in the 1980s. The black metal sound is marked by sonically powerful instrumentation, dissonant production values, a shrieking vocal style, macabre visual elements such as “corpse paint” makeup, and metal songs with a lyrical focus on anti-Christian themes, Satanism, paganism, Norse and Viking mythology, and apocalyptic visions.

Black metal is a popular genre that has spawned new bands in countries across the globe, including the United States, Australia, and Iraq. There are several international variations on black metal, most notably the Scandinavian varieties, including folk-based Viking metal and Norwegian metal. Like many metal forms, it has also generated a host of subgenres, including ambient, industrial, symphonic black metal, melodic black metal, and “unblack” or Christian black metal.

The history of black metal is rooted in ‘70s-era hard rock bands like Black Sabbath, which also used Satanic and anti-Christian imagery and lyrics. The aggressive rhythm and volume of England’s Motorhead were also a primary influence on black metal. Glam rockers KISS and punk outfit the Misfits have been credited as the inspiration for the heavy makeup worn by many musicians and black metal fans.

• The first wave of black metal: Black metal is frequently viewed as having two distinct phases or “waves.” The first wave emerged in the early 1980s with England’s Venom, Sweden’s Bathory, and Switzerland’s Hellhammer. All three shared a preoccupation with furiously paced songs with raw imagery that invoked dark and Satanic themes; Bathory frontman Quorthon’s shrieks also set the template for future black metal vocalists.
• The second wave of black metal: The second wave of black metal is credited to a slew of Northern European bands, which pushed the subgenre into more extreme territory in the early 1990s. Norwegian black metal was forged from the bands and musicians who frequented Helvete—Norwegian for “Hell”—an independent record store in Oslo owned by Euronymous of Mayhem, a pioneer of early Norwegian metal. The store and the record label, Deathlike Silence, which operated in its basement, served as both the focal point and inspiration for many Norwegian black metal groups, including Emperor and Burzum, a music project spawned by Varg Vikernes.
• Black metal crosses over: These acts were soon joined by other black metal bands from Norway, including Darkthrone, Enslaved, Satyricon, and Immortal, which further established black metal’s ferocious tone and look. However, incidents like the murder of Euronymous, the death of Mayhem’s vocalist, Dead (born Per Yngve Ohlin), and the rash of church burnings overshadowed accomplishments like the critical acclaim that met Darkthorne’s 1992 album A Blaze in the Northern Sky. The Norwegian acts spread the gospel of black metal to other countries, which responded with their homegrown versions: Cradle of Filth from England, Behemoth from Poland, Sweden’s Marduk and Dissection, the U.S.’s Xasthur, as well as significant Finnish, Greek, and Australian scenes.

Several distinct characteristics define the look and sound of black metal, including:

1. 1. Instrumentation: Black metal is anchored around a traditional rock band structure of guitar, bass, drums, and vocals, though some acts, like Dimmu Borgir, also employ synth elements. Guitars feature low tunings and dissonant chords to evoke a sense of menace; solos are rare, and riffs are repetitive. Drumming is fast and requires considerable power to wield double bass and blast beats. The atmosphere is favored over technical skills.
2. 2. Transgressive lyrical content: Black metal songs are designed to shock with their lyrical content. Satan and pagan religions are invoked to tear down the perceived hypocrisy of organized religion. The lyrics address chaos and destruction of conflict on a personal and global scale but also evoke the purity of the ancient and natural worlds. Traditional song structures are often abandoned, and singers deliver lyrics in shrieks that contrast with the grunting vocals of death and doom metal.
3. 3. Lo-fi production: Early black metal albums were recorded on minimal budgets, resulting in a homemade, lo-fi aesthetic. That approach continues to define releases by many black metal bands, which sought to distance themselves from mainstream music circles.
4. 4. Corpse paint makeup: The “corpse paint” makeup is one of the defining elements of black metal. Mercyful Fate vocalist King Diamond is credited as one of the first to adopt the ghoulish black-and-white makeup, though he later toned down his theatrical approach to a simpler mix of white face and black-rimmed eyes. While metal music often hinges on live performances, many black metal bands choose not to play live. The Austrian black metal act Abigor, for example, prefers not to play live due to the work involved with putting together a live performance. But bands that do play live, like Gorgoroth and Watain, often employ elaborate horror movie imagery with controversial imagery that sometimes echo their album covers.

There are numerous popular black metal bands in Europe and across the globe, including:

1. 1. Bathory: Sweden’s Bathory, which formed in 1983, was among the pioneers of black metal, lauded for its dark, distorted sound and the high, shrieking vocals of frontman Thomas “Quorthon” Forsberg. The band’s 12 albums, issued between 1984 and 2003, moved between black and Viking metal before adopting a thrash metal sound before Forsberg’s death in 2004. Filmmaker Jonas Akerlund, whose 2018 film Lords of Chaos concerned the Norwegian death metal scene, was the band’s original drummer.
2. 2. Burzum: This solo music project launched by Varg Vikernes in 1991, drew its name from the fantasy fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien. The solo outing freely mixed black metal with folk and medieval music elements meant to suggest an atmosphere of dark magic. Vikernes revived the project following his imprisonment for murder in 2009, and moved the material in the direction of dark ambient music.
3. 3. Darkthrone: Initially a death metal band, the members of Darkthrone—Fenriz, Nocturno Culto, and Zephyrous—embraced black metal through the influence of Mayhem’s Euronymous. Their second album, 1992’s A Blaze in the Northern Sky, which announced the shift, is regarded as a classic black metal release by critics and fans alike. Darkthrone has been primarily a duo since 1994 and has explored crust punk and doom metal throughout 16 studio albums.
4. 4. Mayhem: The importance of Oslo’s Mayhem in the formation of Norwegian black metal has been overshadowed by the band’s twin tragedies—the death of singer Dead and the murder of guitarist Euronymous. But the band’s influence on the morbid tone, sound, and look of black metal through albums like its debut LP, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, is notable, along with Euronymous’s role in fostering the Norwegian black metal scene in its infancy.

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