Among metal music fans, the black metal direction is quite popular , which literally suppresses the listener or viewer with its unprecedented shockingness. This is connected with the music itself, and with the lyrics, and with the images in which the performers appear on the stage, and even with their non-standard behavior in everyday life. Today there are a large number of groups using this style, as well as directions that crystallized from the original genre.
History of black metal
Let's see how it all began, and why the music of this direction received such crazy distribution and popularity around the world. All researchers in the metal genre agree that the black metal style arose in the early 80s of the last century on the basis of trash metal, in which at the initial stage of formation echoes of speed metal were clearly traced.
The first and most famous parent group is the British team Venom, which released the Black Metal album in 1982, which gave the name to the newfound style.
The Swedish wave band Bathory and the Merciful Fate band, which subsequently moved away from the black metal or simply black style in terms of music, are sometimes referred to the first wave of black metal, although they retained the direction of the texts and the use of absolutely incredible images on the stage.
Characteristics of music and lyrics
Now a few words about music and lyrics. The main emphasis in the style itself was placed on a dirty guitar sound. The guitar parts most often looked like a high-speed tremolo using the distortion effect. In drum parts, the so-called blast beat was used. All this was combined with piercing high vocals, although over time the parts became clearly lower, and the vocalists switched from using screaming (piercing scream) to a type of singing such as growling, reminiscent of the roar of a beast or a demon.
As for the texts, in the initial version there was a clearly expressed anti-Christian trend, Satanism, mysticism, occultism and even paganism. True, now you can meet such a paradoxical phenomenon as Christian black metal, which causes a lot of controversy among musicians and critics themselves.
External attributes of performers
But the shocking images of musicians (especially at concerts) clearly occupy not the last place. The performers themselves appear either in makeup or in masks, on the stage there is a sea of blood, severed animal heads, etc. And, of course, leather clothes and massive shoes with a huge number of rivets and spikes became an integral attribute.
What is the view of the musicians of the Gorgoroth, Immortal or Cradle Of Filth bands, which, incidentally, also originally played black metal. And the list goes on and on.
In addition, some musicians went even further. Many of them were even distinguished by the fact that they set fire to churches, which was extremely negatively perceived by civilized society, but they clearly spurred interest in their music from fans.
Varieties of style and the most famous performers of black metal
Groups from the Scandinavian countries probably had the most serious and strong influence on the development of style. The performers from Sweden and Norway were especially distinguished in this.
Over time, the style has undergone a lot of transformations. Now the proto black (true black) and raw black styles are considered real black. But on their basis, the division of music into subgenres began, among which today you can find such as melodic (groups Catamenia, Dissection), symphonic (Dimmu Borgir, Emperor, Arcturus), pagan (Burzum), viking metal (Bathory, Ancient Rites), depressive and atmospheric (Abyss Hate, Coldworld), ambient (Wolves In The Throne Room, Darkspace), epic (Summoning), industrial (Dodheimsgard, Samael), progressive (Enslaved, Agrypnie), black death metal (Behemoth, Sacramentum), doom black metal (Forgotten Tombs), etc.
As already clear, from all this even an incomplete list, it is simply impossible to choose the best black metal. It is better to listen to at least selected albums of several groups to draw conclusions. For example, you can recommend an Mayhem album called De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas or something else. As already clear, the choice here is quite wide.