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Black Metal is a subset of heavy metal rock music. Black metal generally consists of heavily distorted, extremely fast guitar playing, screamed vocals, and fast drumming. Repetition is used to great effect, with some songs being quite simple. An abraded, very low-fidelity recording style is common. This genre of metal frequently uses overtly Satanic lyrics in which bands emphasize blasphemy against Christianity and other occult themes. There has been some appeal in recent years between black metal and various right-wing nationalist movements in certain countries.

The immediate ancestors of modern black metal are bands like Celtic Forst and Venom. The movement is often said to have reached its current form with the recordings of Bathory in the late 80's and early '90's. From there, Norwegian bands such as Darkthrone, Burzum, Mayhem, and Immortal popularized the style to an underground audience. Mass media attention came when the only member of Burzum murdered the guitarist of Mayhem. By the last few years of the 90's, it seemed that the movement was dying, when commercially oriented bands such as Dimmu Borgir using classical-sounding keyboards began to hit European airwaves. Far from the rough, DIY sounds of the earlier Norwegian bands, these bands employed polished sounds suitable for mass audiences favorable to heavy metal.

However, since the mid 90's, an Eastern-European black metal scene has been developing. Bands from these former Iron Curtain lands are recording albums with perhaps more primitive fury than the Norwegians ever achieved. Most of these bands are buried deep into the underground scene, but are being heard by more and more fans of the original, non-symphonic style of black metal ala Darkthrone. Many of these bands emphasize the pagan roots of their countries, occasionally injecting elements of indiginous folk music into their recordings. The Latvian band Skyforger is an excellent example of this. The black metal scene in Russia and Ukraine has produced many bands sounding much like Emperor and Dummu Borgir, but with very low-budget recordings. The Ukrainian band Nokturnal Mortum has acheived some fame in the west; their earlier albums were keyboard drenched, but their current work has a grim, abrasive feel flavored with (good old-fashoned, non-sampled) Slavic folk instruments.

There are a relatively small number of American bands playing Black Metal (sometimes called USBM bands). As of yet, this movement has not taken a particularly clear form, but more well know groups are Judas Iscariot (sounding very much like Darkthrone) and Averse Sefira (death metal influenced).

There are quite a number of Sub-Genres of Black Metal. Here are the main ones:

• Viking Metal (Immortal, Enslaved)
• Celtic Metal (Cruachan, Geasa)
• Troll Metal (Arckanum, Mortiis)
• Battle Metal (Bal-Sagoth, Mortiis)
• Melodic Black Metal (Abyssos, Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir)
• Medieval Metal (As You In Agony Cry, some Satyricon)
• Tolkien Metal (Isengard, Summoning, Suidarka)

There is A LOT more genres, so you can explore and find them!

Reference

• Michael Moynihan, Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground (Feral House) ISBN 0922915482