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.
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.
National Socialist black metal is a political movement within the black metal music scene that promotes neo-Nazism, neo-fascism, and white supremacist ideologies. NSBM artists typically combine neo-Nazi imagery and ideology with ethnic European paganism, Satanism, or Nazi occultism, or a combination thereof, and vehemently oppose Christianity, Islam and Judaism from a racialist viewpoint. NSBM is not seen as a distinct genre, but as a völkisch movement within black metal. According to Mattias Gardell, NSBM musicians see this ideology as "a logical extension of the political and spiritual dissidence inherent in black 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.
Per Yngve "Pelle" Ohlin, better known by his stage name Dead, was a Swedish musician who was best known as the lead vocalist and lyricist of the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem from 1988 until his death in 1991. Prior to Mayhem, he performed as the vocalist in the Swedish death/thrash band Morbid. Dead was a popular figure of the Norwegian black metal scene, and his legacy persists in the genre to this day. Roadrunner Records ranked him No. 48 out of 50 of The Greatest Metal Front-Men of All Time.
Øystein Aarseth, better known by his stage name Euronymous, was a Norwegian musician and a founder of and central figure in the early Norwegian black metal scene. He was a co-founder and guitarist of the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem and was the only constant member from the band's formation in 1984 until his death in 1993. He was also founder and owner of the extreme metal record label Deathlike Silence Productions and record shop Helvete.
Mayhem is a Norwegian black metal band formed in Langhus in 1984. They were one of the founders of the Norwegian black metal scene, and their music has strongly influenced the black metal genre. Mayhem's early career was highly controversial, primarily because of their notorious live performances, the 1991 suicide of vocalist Per Yngve Ohlin ("Dead") and the 1993 murder of guitarist Øystein Aarseth ("Euronymous") by former member Varg Vikernes of Burzum.
The early Norwegian black metal scene of the 1990s is credited with creating the modern black metal genre and produced some of the most acclaimed and influential artists in extreme metal. It attracted massive media attention when it was revealed that its members had been responsible for three murders, a suicide, and a wave of church burnings in Norway.
Thorns, also known as Stigma Diabolicum, is a Norwegian black metal band that formed in 1989 and was part of the early Norwegian black metal scene. They made two highly influential demos in the early 1990s, Grymyrk and Trøndertun, but have only released one full-length album.
De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is the debut studio album by Norwegian black metal band Mayhem. Songwriting began in 1987, but due to the suicide of vocalist Per "Dead" Ohlin and the murder of guitarist Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth, the album's release was delayed until May 1994. De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is widely regarded one of the most influential black metal albums of all time. It is the band's only studio album to feature Aarseth and Varg "Count Grishnackh" Vikernes.
A Blaze in the Northern Sky is the second studio album by Norwegian black metal band Darkthrone. It was recorded at Creative Studios in August 1991 and released on 26 February 1992 by Peaceville Records. Apart from earlier rehearsal recordings between March 1991 and the Norwegian summer holidays the record contained the band's first official black metal recordings and is considered a classic within the genre. It was the first album of what fans dub the "Unholy Trinity", the other albums being Under a Funeral Moon and Transilvanian Hunger. It was the last album to feature bassist Dag Nilsen. In 2020, the album was put on the National Library of Norway's permanent exhibition due to its significance to Norwegian culture and as a starting point for Norwegian black metal.
Jan Axel Blomberg, better known by his stage name Hellhammer, is a Norwegian drummer. He is best known as the drummer of the black metal band Mayhem, which he joined in 1988, and is the only member to appear on all of their albums. In 1987 Blomberg, alongside Steinar Sverd Johnsen and Marius Vold, formed the avant-garde black metal band Arcturus, which broke up in April 2007 and reunited in 2011. He named himself after the Swiss extreme metal band Hellhammer. Praised as a talented musician, Blomberg is a three-time winner of the Spellemannprisen award.
The Dawn of the Black Hearts is a bootleg live album by the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem. The title originates from a line of lyrics Fenriz of Darkthrone wrote for the band.
Les Légions Noires was a movement of French underground black metal musicians and their bands, centered mostly around the city of Brest, in Brittany. The bands involved limited their releases to very small numbers, and distributed them among friends and close workers.
Fenriz Presents… The Best of Old-School Black Metal is a compilation album by Darkthrone drummer Fenriz featuring bands that have been highly influential for, and pioneers of the black metal genre; Nattefrost and Aura Noir being the only newer bands. He originally also wanted the compilation to include Possessed, but Larry LaLonde refused.
I.N.R.I. is the debut album by the Brazilian extreme metal band Sarcófago. It was recorded in July and released in August 1987.
Until the Light Takes Us is a 2008 American documentary film about early Norwegian black metal, directed by Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell. The film premiered at the AFI Film Festival in 2008, a year before it was released in theaters.
Lords of Chaos is a 2018 biographical horror crime film directed and co-written by Jonas Åkerlund. Adapted from the 1998 book of the same name, the film is a historical fiction account of the early 1990s Norwegian black metal scene told from the perspective of Mayhem co-founder Euronymous. It stars Rory Culkin as Euronymous, Emory Cohen as Varg Vikernes, Jack Kilmer as Dead, and Sky Ferreira as Ann-Marit.
