Black Metal

Black metal pushes tempos to 180-300 BPM. Guitars use tremolo picking — the same note or chord struck as fast as the wrist allows — to create a continuous wall rather than discrete riffs. Drummers play blast beats: kick and snare alternating on 16th notes. Vocals are shrieked at the top of the throat, often with low growls underneath. Lyrics work in anti-Christianity, Norse mythology, nature worship, and nihilism. The aesthetic is deliberately lo-fi: 80s-style cassette-quality production is reverse-engineered on modern recordings, and corpse paint (white face with black accents) is part of the visual code.

The first wave came from Britain's Venom (whose 1982 album was literally titled 'Black Metal'), Switzerland's Celtic Frost, and Denmark's Mercyful Fate. The defining second wave was Norwegian: Mayhem, Burzum, Darkthrone, Emperor, and Immortal in 1991-93. The scene became international news through real-world violence — over 50 Norwegian church arsons in 1992-96 (including the 12th-century Fantoft Stave Church), Mayhem singer Per 'Dead' Ohlin's suicide in 1991, and Burzum's Varg Vikernes killing Mayhem's Euronymous in 1993. A post-2000 third wave (Wolves in the Throne Room, Liturgy in the US) pushed the form toward 'atmospheric' and 'post-black.'

Listen for how tremolo picking creates a chord that is also a texture — the individual notes blur into a drone. Underneath the blast beat, kick and snare gradually separate into distinct pulses if you focus. Vocals are often unintelligible by design; treat them as a third guitar. Many records insert a sudden quiet acoustic or synth passage between blast sections — that contrast is part of the arrangement.

Mayhem's 'De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas' (1994) is the Norwegian second-wave canon. For the atmospheric strain, Burzum's 'Filosofem' (1996); for US post-black metal, Wolves in the Throne Room's 'Two Hunters' (2007).

Varg Vikernes received a 21-year prison sentence — the legal maximum in Norway — for the 1993 killing of Euronymous and for two church arsons, and was paroled in 2009. The Fantoft Stave Church, built in the 1100s and burned in June 1992, was rebuilt as a near-exact replica that still stands outside Bergen.