History of Black Metal
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History of Black Metal
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Black metal
Stylistic origins: Heavy metal and hardcore punk
Cultural origins: Late 1980s Europe, especially Scandinavia
Typical instruments: Guitar - Bass - Keyboard - Drums
Mainstream popularity: None
Subgenres
Battle - Celtic - Folk - Forest - Mass murder - Medieval - National Socialist Black Metal - Pagan metal - Symphonic - Tolkien - Troll - Vampyric - Viking
Black metal is a subgenre of heavy metal music. Death metal is often
closely related.
Black metal has proven somewhat difficult to categorize. Some fans and
musicians have a firm concept of genre and subgenre, but others reject
such categorization as limiting or useless. There is often significant
crossover from one category to another, and often the influence of
non-metal music is present.
Black metal generally consists of heavily distorted, extremely fast guitar
playing, screamed vocals, and fast drumming. The genre makes extensive use
of repetition, with some songs being quite simple musically. An abraded,
very low-fidelity recording style is common to the early albums associated
with the genre. Also common are overtly Satanic lyrics which blaspheme
Christianity, as well as other occult themes.
A distinct feature of the early bands' image was the use of corpse paint,
a special kind of black and white make-up which emphasized their "demonic"
appearance...