I LIVE for black metal, I'm in a prog Black/Death metal band, and I listen to Mother North several times a day.In fact


and of course the Norwegian Black Metal National Anthem

My single favourite black metal band is Burzum. Precisely because they are anything but the usual old school Norwegian black metal silliness. Well, musically. I guess in acts they were the very centre of all things stupid and church burning & murder specifically. But musically they were so far ahead of their contemporaries. The biggest tragedy of Varg murdering Øystein wasn't the death of somebody, it was us being deprived of a proper follow up to Filosofem, the single best metal record of the 1990s. Big statement, I know


It's a bit annoying really because I have named all the songs in Norwegian, but most folk know them as the German names, so everyone else knows that song as Dunkelheit but I know it as Burzum, and that's what the official Burzum website is the "official" title, coz you know, Vikernes is Norwegian and has always written in Norwegian, or at least mostly.

Anyway, love black metal. Bathory, Mayhem (up to a point), Darkthrone (especially their most recent stuff which is just damn good fun), Enslaved, Emperor (good God they are so good live!), Aura Noir, alot of the depressive bands like Shining, Lifelover, Bethlehem & Forgotten Tomb, & then alot of the better current black metal is American, folk like Woves In The Throne Room, Leviathan, Xasthur, Agalloch, Cobalt & Woods Of Ypres (OK, Canadian). There are quite alot of bland & uninspiring black metal bands, but there's also so many goodies in there that as far as metal goes it's probably the most rewarding sub-genre.

Once upon a time I was a HUGE black metal fan. Nowadays I only like select stuff, like BLASPHEMY, SABBAT (although they're more of a black/thrash band), BATHORY, VON, CONQUEROR, REVENGE, BLACK WITCHERY etc.

BLASPHEMY are still the best though, even after more than 20 years. AND they took the best bandpic ever:



BLACK METAL SKINHEADS, SATANIC POWERLIFTERS

I like the aesthetic of black metal, and some aspects of the sound, but it seems to me like a hand picked assortment of 5 black metal songs probably covers everything ever done in Black Metal and as a result I really haven't delved that deeply. The thing I find really irritating though is the lack of bass.

Sunn O))) of course solved this problem with their album Black One which strapped Black Metal to their existing bass-oriented shtick, resulting in crazy cool shit like this:


It's basically a big tribute to BM with guest vocalists from Leviathan and Xasthur, an Immortal cover, a Bathory tribute, and tongue-in-cheek fake band member names like "Mystik Fogg Invokator" and "MK Ultra Blizzard".

As a side note, Sunn O)))'s regular vocalist is also the incredible Attila Csihar of Mayhem fame, though curiously he does not appear on Black One.

Actually, three people mentioned Bathory.

I still insist you should probably listen to Burzum at some point. Fucking fantastic band.