Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, a shrieking vocal style, heavily distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, raw (lo-fi) recording, unconventional song structures, and an emphasis on atmosphere. Artists often appear in corpse paint and adopt pseudonyms.
Manowar is an American heavy metal band from Auburn, New York. Formed in 1980, the group is known for lyrics based on fantasy and mythology, as well as numerous songs celebrating the genre and its core audience. The band is also known for a loud and emphatic sound. In an interview for MTV in February 2007, bassist Joey DeMaio lamented that "these days, there's a real lack of big, epic metal that is drenched with crushing guitars and choirs and orchestras... so it's nice to be one of the few bands that's actually doing that". In 1984, the band was included in the Guinness Book of World Records for delivering the loudest performance, a record which they have since broken on two occasions. They also hold the world record for the longest heavy metal concert after playing for five hours and 1 minute in Bulgaria in 2008. They also have been known for their slogan "Death to false metal". The band maintains a strong cult following and has sold over 30 mln copies of their recordings.
Abigor is an Austrian black metal band formed in 1993. They are named after an upper demon of war in Christian demonology.
Roadrunner Records is an American record label focused on heavy metal and hard rock bands. Founded in the Netherlands in 1980, it is now a division of Warner Music Group and is based in New York City.
Earache Records is a British independent record label, music publisher and management company founded by Digby Pearson in 1985, based in Nottingham, England, with offices in London and New York. The label helped to pioneer extreme metal by releasing early grindcore and death metal records between the late 1980s and mid-1990s. Its roster has since diversified into more mainstream guitar music, working with bands such as Rival Sons, the Temperance Movement, Blackberry Smoke, Scarlet Rebels and the White Buffalo. The company also hosted the 'Earache Express' stage at Glastonbury Festival in 2017 and 'The Earache Factory' at Boomtown 2018. The label's logo is a homage to Thrasher magazine, as Pearson was a skateboard culture enthusiast.
Metal Blade Records is an American independent record label founded by Brian Slagel in 1982. The US office for Metal Blade is located in Agoura Hills, California. It also has offices in Germany, Japan, Canada, and the UK. The label is distributed in the US by RED Distribution, and in Canada by Sony Music Entertainment. It was distributed by Warner Bros. Records in the United States from 1988 to 1993.
Headbangers Ball is a music television program that consisted of heavy metal music videos airing on MTV and its global affiliates. The show began on MTV on April 18, 1987, playing heavy metal music videos from both well-known and more obscure artists. The show offered a stark contrast to Top 40 music videos shown during the day.
Deathwish, Inc. is an American independent record label conceived by Jacob Bannon of Converge and Tre McCarthy in 2000. Their first release was Deeper the Wound, a split album between Converge and Japanese band Hellchild on April 23, 2001. Deathwish established itself quickly, working with a diverse group of bands and eventually becoming one of the most respected and innovative labels in contemporary hardcore punk and aggressive music in general.
Xasthur is the project of American musician Scott "Malefic" Conner. Conner formed Xasthur in 1995 and released eight studio albums of black metal by 2010, when he announced the end of the project. However, he began using the name once again in 2015 to instead perform acoustic neofolk music. The first album with this new style was entitled Subject to Change, released in 2016.
Vomitory is a Swedish death metal band formed in 1989 by guitarist Urban Gustafsson and bassist Ronnie Olson. The band released a total of eight albums, all released on Metal Blade Records. After breaking up in 2013 and reuniting for a one-off show in 2017, Vomitory officially reformed in 2018.
Roger Tiegs, better known by his stage name Infernus, is a Norwegian black metal musician and Satanist. He is the sole founding member and chief ideologist of the black metal band Gorgoroth, which was formed in 1992, as well as the founder and head of Forces of Satan Records. He is mainly a guitarist but has also participated as bassist, drummer and vocalist on several recordings released both by Gorgoroth and other bands.
Listenable Records is an independent metal label originally founded in 1990 in France. The label specializes in metal, with a focus on extreme metal music.
Gehenna is a Norwegian black metal band.
The Stone is a Serbian black metal band from Belgrade formed in 1996. They were originally known as Stone to Flesh and changed their name to The Stone in 2001.
Alessandro Nunziati, better known by his stage name Lord Vampyr, is an Italian musician, record producer and writer, famous for being the former vocalist of the gothic metal band Theatres des Vampires, as well as one of its founding members.
Inquisition is an American black metal band that formed in Cali, Colombia in 1988 and later relocated to Seattle, Washington. The band possessed a thrash metal sound on its earliest recordings, but began incorporating more black metal influences in 1996 with its first extended play Incense of Rest.
Black Flame is an Italian black metal band, formed in 1998 in the districts surrounding the towns of Asti and Turin.
Catacombs is a doom metal solo project of Xathagorra Mlandroth. The band's music was deeply inspired by Lovecraftian horror and the Cthulhu Mythos, often directly referencing it lyrically. The project followed Xathagorra's other endeavor Hierophant but was concluded when Xathagorra began releasing all his subsequent music under the name Xathagorra through his record label Xathagorra Industries. Xathagorra Industries re-released Catacombs albums in physical format as well as through Xathagorra's bandcamp page.
Sumerian Records is an American record label based in Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and London. The label was founded in 2006 by Ash Avildsen. They have signed artists such as Black Veil Brides, Poppy, Bad Omens, Palaye Royale, and The Smashing Pumpkins. It is considered a true lifestyle modern music brand known for both breaking new artists and revitalizing iconic legacy acts. In early 2022, Sumerian acquired Behemoth Entertainment, a comic book and video game publisher, in order to increase their merchandise options and further expand the brand.
Winter of Apokalypse was an American black metal band from Portland, Oregon, in the mid-1990s through 2015, consisting mostly of previous members of Thy Infernal, known for their raw and grim sound. The band used satanic images in their artwork and in their stage apparel during performances. However, their extreme presentation did not stop at their sound or their appearance. Even the pseudonyms the band members adopted were extreme: the drummer is named Armageddon, the bassist is named Slut, and their guitarist chose the name Fascist.
