A Brief History of Black Metal

Metal doesn’t get more evil than black metal

Gonna start things off this week with a massive content warning. The history of black metal is fraught with murder, suicide, assault, arson, and some truly odious ideologies from those connected to the scene. You’ve been warned.

The end of March saw Deafheaven release their latest album: Lonely People with Power. I’m happy to report that it is a certified banger. I’m not the only person who thinks so. It has drawn almost universal praise from all of the leading professional music critics. For those unfamiliar with Deafheaven, they are easily the most successful band from the niche metal subgenre of blackgaze. I know what you’re wondering: what the hell is blackgaze? I’m glad you asked! It’s a mashup of black metal and shoegaze. That just raises more questions, doesn’t it? I don’t have the time or energy to go into shoegaze, but I’m more than happy to dive into black metal! In the meantime, give this song a listen to get an understanding of what blackgaze sounds like.

Back to black metal. What is it? Well, black metal falls under the umbrella subgenre of extreme metal that also includes subgenres like thrash, death metal, doom metal, and grindcore among others. It’s typically characterized by distorted guitars played at higher pitched trebly tones (often with no solos), muted bass guitars, double-bass and blast beats on drums, “shrieking” vocals (raspier and higher octaves than the “growling” vocals associated with death metal), and unconventional song structures (don’t expect many clearly defined verse-chorus sections). Aside from the sound of the music itself, it’s common for black metal musicians to take on pseudonyms and paint their faces in a style known as “corpse paint.” Lyrically, black metal songs tend to deal with the occult, evil, death, misanthropy, and other uplifting topics of that nature.

First-Wave Black Metal

Black metal can trace its origins back to 1982 with the release of the album Black Metal by Venom. The title track in particular is where the subgenre derived its name and a lot of the traits now associated with it. Venom was an English thrash metal band that experimented with a lot of different styles that would become influential on subsequent bands that better refined those styles into the subgenres we recognize today. The success of Black Metal kicked off a wave of bands (primarily in Europe) that would become known as first-wave black metal. The most prominent of those bands included Hellhammer (Switzerland), Celtic Frost (Switzerland), Mercyful Fate (Denmark), and Bathory (Sweden). Of those bands, Bathory is far and away the most impactful on the black metal subgenre. The band was founded by vocalist and guitarist Thomas Forsberg who adopted the pseudonym Quorthon, wore corpse paint, and used shrieking style vocals that have become the signature vocal sound for the subgenre.

True Norwegian Black Metal

For as influential as the first wave of black metal bands were, it was the second wave out of Norway in the 1990s that would come to truly define black metal. These bands included Mayhem, Gorgoroth, Immortal, Emperor, Burzum, Darkthrone, and Satyricon among others. These bands fully embraced the shrieking vocals, raw sound, and corpse paint that has become synonymous with the subgenre. When most people talk about black metal, this is the music they’re describing. In fact, there is a not insignificant number of black metal fans who believe that the bands from this particular era are the only legitimate black metal bands. They are often referred to as True Norwegian Black Metal with anyone else written off as posers. I am not one of those fans, but I do tend to like the sound of this era the best. The early albums from these bands have a very similar sound, but they each moved off into their own unique directions as they evolved. Emperor became the forerunners of melodic black metal, Burzum pioneered ambient black metal, Darkthrone blended death metal and punk with black metal, etc. The most infamous band from this era would certainly be Mayhem.

Mayhem gained notoriety following the release of their first EP, Deathcrush. The vocalist on that album departed shortly after its release and was replaced with Per Yngve Ohlin who went by the pseudonym Dead. His shrieking vocals and macabre persona helped define both the band and the Norwegian black metal scene. He really popularized the use of corpse paint and would cut himself on stage while performing. Unfortunately, Dead committed suicide in 1991 before ever recording an album as the group’s vocalist. That didn’t stop the band’s guitarist (Oystein “Euronymous” Aarseth) from taking photographs of his corpse and using them as the album cover for a future live album. Don’t worry if that sounds utterly deranged. It gets much worse. He also made necklaces out of Dead’s skull fragments for the band to wear. Needless to say, this did not sit well with everyone in the band. Bassist Jorn “Necrobutcher” Stubberud left the band after these events which left Euronymous and drummer Jan Axel “Hellhammer” Blomberg as the only remaining members. In order to complete the album the band had been working on, Euronymous brought in Attila Csihar as vocalist and Varg Vikernes of Burzum as bassist. The latter would prove to be a poor decision. Vikernes was already suspected of being behind some church burnings that had taken place in Norway, so he was no stranger to criminal acts. The good news is that Mayhem did manage to record the album which would become one of the most critically acclaimed black metal albums of all time titled De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas when it was released in 1994. The bad news is that Vikernes would end up murdering Euronymous by stabbing him twenty-three times (sixteen of which were in the back) before the album was released. Vikernes claimed he did so in self-defense, but that didn’t convince the jury for some reason. He was sentenced to prison for twenty-one years (the maximum sentence under Norwegian law) where he formed his own neo-Nazi organization. What I’m trying to convey is that Varg Vikernes is a terrible human being by every conceivable measure. I am typically pretty good at separating art from the artist, but I will never listen to anything from Burzum under any circumstance. Thus concludes the content warning portion of this week’s piece. If you’d like to watch a dramatized version of these events, then check out the film Lords of Chaos starring Rory Culkin.

I know I spent the majority of this section talking about the drama involving one band in particular than the actual music, so let me close by discussing my personal favorite black metal band: Gorgoroth. I specifically want to talk about the era from 1998-2007 when their lead vocalist was Kristian Eivind Espedal, better known as Gaahl. He provided vocals for only the title track on the album Destroyer (1998) before being the lead vocalist on Incipit Satan (2000), Twilight of the Idols (2003), and Ad Majorem Sathanas Gloriam (2006). I think Gorgoroth is the most complete band from the Norwegian scene, and that is especially true with Gaahl’s truly unique voice. Twilight of the Idols is easily my favorite black metal album, and “Procreating Satan” is a perfect black metal song in my mind.

Symphonic Black Metal

Despite being as inaccessible to casual listeners as black metal had been up to this point, it was only a matter of time until a more commercially appealing variant would emerge. That arrived in the form of symphonic black metal. This would be spearheaded by two bands in particular: Dimmu Borgir from Norway and Cradle of Filth from the United Kingdom. The idea behind these groups was pretty simple. They would meld the traditional black metal style with a symphony or orchestra providing backing. It seems discordant on its surface to mix two completely different musical styles this way, but it really works for some reason. These bands took their inspiration from the previously mentioned Emperor (especially the 1994 album In the Nightside Eclipse), but Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth really popularized it.

Blackened Fusions

I’m not going to spend too much time on all of the many metal subgenre fusions with black metal, but I wanted to address some of the biggies. You’ve got blackened doom metal, blackened thrash, blackened grindcore, blackened crust, and black ‘n’ roll just to name a handful. Far and away the most successful fusion has been blackened death metal. The reasons are pretty straightforward: black metal and death metal already share many stylistic characteristics, so it’s pretty easy to meld the two. Bands like Blasphemy, Goatwhore, Skeletonwitch, Belphegor, and Dissection have all had success within the blackened death fusion subgenre, but far and away the most successful band to embrace the style has been Behemoth out of Poland.

Behemoth has had quite an interesting musical evolution. They were initially just a straight black metal band when they formed in 1991. Their sound wasn’t much different from their Norwegian contemporaries. Their albums Sventevith (Storming Near the Baltic) (1995), Grom (1996), and Pandemonic Incantations (1998) were all traditional black metal. They first began incorporating death metal elements into their sound with the release of Satanica in 1999. Vocalist and songwriter Adam “Nergal” Darski began incorporating more growling vocals associated with death metal instead of the typical shrieking vocals of black metal as well as the occasional guitar solo and lower-tuned guitars. Behemoth continued to move closer and closer to death metal and further away from black metal over their next four albums with Apostasy released in 2007 being almost entirely death metal. They began to reincorporate more black metal characteristics with Evangelion (2009), but the future of the band was in jeopardy shortly thereafter when Nergal was diagnosed with leukemia in 2010. Rather than throw in the towel, the band began working on a new album again after Nergal had a successful bone marrow transplant in 2011. That album would end up becoming the band’s magnum opus when it was released in 2014. That album is The Satanist, and it saw the band reintegrate a lot of their earlier black metal sound while still retaining the death metal elements. It is one of my favorite albums of all time, and I hold it up as one of the greatest examples of extreme metal ever produced. If you’re ever looking to give extreme metal a try, I would recommend starting with this album.

Ambient Black Metal and Blackgaze

I wanted to end this little history lesson where we started with ambient black metal and blackgaze. Bands belonging to this subgenre include Leviathan, Xasthur, and Deafheaven. Most of the bands I’ve covered up to this point have been from Europe, but this particular vein of black metal has seen a fair number of American bands leading the way. Leviathan and Xasthur are both solo projects with one individual (Jef “Wrest” Whitehead and Scott "Malefic" Conner respectively) providing all instrumentation and vocal performances themselves. Deafheaven, on the other hand, is a full ensemble of five members.

All three bands eschew the faster tempos and occult song lyrics of traditional black metal in favor of slower paced songs with lyrical content focused more on the human condition. Despite these differences, they still embrace the trebly guitars, blast beats, and shrieking vocals that have become the hallmarks of black metal. It’s just a new twist on the classic formula.

There is plenty I have skipped over about the subgenre, but I wanted to keep this brief and not write a dissertation on the subject. I’ll let the below video fill in some of the gaps on the numerous different musical styles within the subgenre.