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| Black metal is a subset of heavy metal. 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. | Black metal is a subset of heavy metal rock ]. 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. | ||
Revision as of 06:47, 26 December 2001
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.
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 killed the guitarist of Mayhem. By the last few years of the 90's, it seemed that the movement was dying, when commercially oriented bands 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 acheived. 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.