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.
Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. It typically employs heavily distorted and low-tuned guitars, played with techniques such as palm muting and tremolo picking; deep growling vocals; aggressive, powerful drumming, featuring double kick and blast beat techniques; minor keys or atonality; abrupt tempo, key, and time signature changes; and chromatic chord progressions. The lyrical themes of death metal may include slasher film-style violence, political conflict, religion, nature, philosophy, true crime and science fiction.
Darkthrone is a Norwegian black metal band from Kolbotn, Akershus. Formed in 1986 as a death metal band named Black Death, in 1991 Darkthrone embraced a black metal style influenced by Bathory and Celtic Frost and became one of the leading bands in the Norwegian black metal scene.
Burzum is a Norwegian music project founded by Varg Vikernes in 1991. Although Burzum never played live performances, it became a staple of the early Norwegian black metal scene and is considered one of the most influential acts in black metal's history. Vikernes has also released five dark ambient and neofolk albums. The word "burzum" means "darkness" in the Black Speech, a fictional language crafted by The Lord of the Rings writer J. R. R. Tolkien. Burzum's lyrics and imagery are often inspired by fantasy and Norse mythology.
Doom metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music that typically uses slower tempos, low-tuned guitars and a much "thicker" or "heavier" sound than other heavy metal genres. Both the music and the lyrics are intended to evoke a sense of despair, dread, and impending doom. The genre is strongly influenced by the early work of Black Sabbath, who formed a prototype for doom metal. During the first half of the 1980s, a number of bands such as Witchfinder General and Pagan Altar from England, American bands Pentagram, Saint Vitus, the Obsessed, Trouble, and Cirith Ungol, and Swedish band Candlemass defined doom metal as a distinct genre. Pentagram, Saint Vitus, Trouble and Candlemass have been referred to as "the Big Four of Doom Metal".
Louis Cachet, better known as Varg Vikernes, is a Norwegian musician and author best known for his early black metal albums and later crimes. His first five records, released under the name Burzum from 1992 to 1996, made him one of the most influential figures in the early Norwegian black metal scene. He was convicted of murder and arson in 1994 and sentenced to 21 years in prison, being released after serving 15 years.
Gylve Fenris Nagell, known professionally as Fenriz, is a Norwegian musician, part-time music journalist and online radio host who is best known as being one half of the black metal duo Darkthrone, alongside Nocturno Culto. Although primarily a drummer and songwriter, he has also played bass and guitar and performed vocals for Darkthrone and several other metal bands. Fenriz is famed for his encyclopedic knowledge of metal music, his eager promotion of underground bands and the DIY ethic, and his rejection of the "showbiz side of the music industry". Fenriz was also the studio drummer for doom metal band Valhall, and has had several solo projects, including the folk black metal project Isengard and the dark ambient project Neptune Towers.
Type O Negative was an American gothic metal band formed in Brooklyn, New York City in 1989 by Peter Steele, Kenny Hickey, Josh Silver, and Sal Abruscato, who was later replaced by Johnny Kelly. Their lyrical emphasis on themes of romance, depression, and death resulted in the nickname "the Drab Four". The band went platinum with 1993's Bloody Kisses, and gold with 1996's October Rust, and gained a fanbase through seven studio albums, two best-of compilations, and concert DVDs.
Southern Lord is an American heavy metal record label that was founded in 1998 by Greg Anderson. It initially specialized in experimental metal: particularly doom metal, stoner rock, and drone metal. The label later expanded its line-up to include artists from black metal, hardcore punk and crust punk bands.
Chris Reifert is an American death metal musician, and one of the pioneers of the death/doom genre. Although his music is more death metal than doom metal, he is one of the first musicians that blended the two styles. He played drums on the Death debut album, Scream Bloody Gore. Since he parted ways with Chuck Schuldiner in 1987 after Schuldiner moved back to Florida, Reifert decided to stay in the San Francisco Bay Area, and in 1987 he formed his own band, Autopsy. In this band, he played not only drums but handled the vocals as well. After several albums, Autopsy split up in 1995 and Reifert and bandmate Danny Coralles began playing in their side-project, Abscess, full-time. After Abscess dissolved in 2010, Autopsy reformed and is currently planning to tour and record new material.
Attila Gábor Csihar, also sometimes known as Void, is a Hungarian extreme metal vocalist, best known for his vocal work in Norwegian black metal band Mayhem and American drone metal band Sunn O))). Author Ian Christe describes his vocals as "operatic".
Lee Robert Dorrian is an English singer, best known as a former member of grindcore band Napalm Death and later frontman of doom metal band Cathedral.
Alf Peter Tägtgren is a Swedish musician and record producer. He is the founder, main songwriter, lead vocalist, and guitarist of death metal band Hypocrisy as well as the industrial metal band Pain in which he is the only member. He is also the owner of The Abyss recording studio and the co-founder of Lindemann, a music project between Tägtgren and Rammstein vocalist Till Lindemann. Tägtgren left Lindemann in 2020.
Gothic metal is a fusion genre combining the aggression of heavy metal with the dark atmospheres of gothic rock. The music of gothic metal is diverse with bands known to adopt the gothic approach to different styles of heavy metal music. The genre originated during the early 1990s in the United Kingdom originally as an outgrowth of death-doom, a fusion of death metal and doom metal. Lyrics are generally dark and introspective with inspiration from gothic fiction as well as personal experiences.
Hate Forest is a Ukrainian black metal band formed by Roman Saenko, the leading member of Drudkh, Dark Ages, and Blood of Kingu. Thurios joined the band in 1998 after the recording of Scythia. The music is mostly very fast, but occasionally slow, with low, distorted vocals, raw low fidelity quality production, sometimes with programmed drums(drummer is a live player during concerts), and dark ambient elements. Musical influences are mostly from Scandinavian black metal to traditional death metal, especially Bolt Thrower. According to the band, its lyrics are about mythology, mainly Slavic, and inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's stories and Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy. The band never gave interviews, never released photos, and held its distance from the black metal scene. After Hate Forest disbanded, Saenko focused on Drudkh, and other side projects such as Blood of Kingu, Windswept and Precambrian which are of different inspirations. This project officially came to an end in 2016, but in 2020 released a new album.
Leviathan is an American black metal solo project that started in 1998 by Jef Whitehead under the pseudonym Wrest. On all Leviathan albums, Wrest records all instruments and performs vocals on his own.
Stream from the Heavens is the only studio album by Finnish doom metal band Thergothon. It was recorded in late 1992 and released after many delays on June 15, 1994 through the Italian record label Avantgarde Music. The band had eventually disbanded a year before the release of the album. Stream from the Heavens continues the funeral doom subgenre that Thergothon pioneered with their 1991 demo Fhtagn nagh Yog-Sothoth. The album was re-issued on CD in 1999 and also in 2004 by Belgian label Painiac as a 12" LP, limited to 500 copies.
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.
Avantgarde Music is an Italian record label, formed as a continuation of Obscure Plasma Records, focusing on black and doom metal artists. The label had a sub-label called Wounded Love Records, which has released albums by Dolorian and Taake. A new sub-label, Flowing Downward, had been founded in 2018, specializing in atmospheric black metal bands specifically.
Striborg is a black metal / ambient project of Australian musician Russell Menzies. The project first began in 1994 under the name Kathaaria and during this time the stage name "Vvelkaarn" was used. The name Kathaaria was adapted from a Darkthrone song titled "Kathaarian Life Code".
