Black Metal

Venom printed the words on a sleeve in 1982 without playing anything like it. Quorthon built the actual sound alone in a Stockholm bedroom two years later, and by 1993 a circle of Norwegian teenagers had turned it into burned churches, a murder in Oslo and a run of records nobody has bettered since.

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Genre Histories

Black Metal: The Complete History, the Bands and the Albums

Black metal was named in 1982 by a band who could not play it, perfected alone in a Stockholm suburb, and then built in Norway by teenagers who burned down part of their own country's history on the way. This is the whole story: the first wave, the second wave, the fires and the court records, the Nordic and European s...

By Eirik Solvang · 8 chapters · latest February 2026
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Chapters

  1. 01 Black Metal: The Complete History, the Bands and the Albums
  2. 02 The First Wave: Venom, Bathory, Hellhammer and the Word Itself (1981-1987)
  3. 03 Norway: Helvete, the Inner Circle and the Second Wave (1991-1994)
  4. 04 The Churches, the Killings and the Press That Came With Them
  5. 05 Sweden, Finland and the Rest of the North
  6. 06 France, Poland, Greece, Iceland and the Scenes That Followed
  7. 07 America: USBM, Cascadia and a Long Argument About Authenticity
  8. 08 After the Second Wave: 2000 to Now

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Slayer on stage Explainers

Why Is It Called Black Metal?

One item in a list of five, thrown out in an interview by an irritated twenty three year old and printed on a sleeve. Where the words come from, the ten years when t...

Essential Albums Christian Black Metal Bands Explainers Why Black Metal Musicians Use Pseudonyms Essential Albums The Best Black Metal Songs

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