Top 10 Best Black Metal Bands For Your Favorite Playlist
We list some of the best Black metal bands of all time. Most of these bands have evolved from black metal shock-rockers to stadium-filling gothic and symphonic metal superstars.
What is Black metal?
Black metal is a type of heavy rock music having lyrics that deal with the Devil and the supernatural. Black metal songs typically have a fast tempo and feature shrieking vocals, heavily distorted guitars and unconventional song structures.
Top 10 Best Black Metal Bands
1. Behemoth
Behemoth is a Polish blackened death metal band from Gdańsk. They are considered to have played an important role in establishing the Polish extreme metal underground, alongside bands such as Vader, Decapitated, Vesania and Hate. Behemoth are considered one of the best black metal bands of all time. The band strives to convey that being religious is not the key to happiness. They recorded their third album, Pandemonic Incantations which was a “breakthrough moment” in Behemoth’s short career. The reactions of their ever-increasing fanbase and metal media set a new standard for them. Another successful album Satanica, was which their black metal sound had evolved into blackened death metal.
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Read more:
- Behemoth: “Satan is the most misunderstood figure in the world”
- Behemoth: The Satanist who took on the Polish government and won
- Behemoth’s Nergal to Chaoszine: “Art is meant to be free as a bird and no force on earth can stop it
- Interview With Behemoth
2. Cradle of Filth
Cradle of Filth are an English extreme metal band that formed in Suffolk in 1991. The band’s musical style evolved from black metal to a cleaner and more “produced” amalgam of gothic metal, symphonic black metal and other extreme metal styles. Their lyrical themes and imagery are heavily influenced by gothic literature, poetry, mythology and horror films. This resulted in a more commercial approach that yielded internationally charting efforts like Damnation and a Day (2003), Thornography (2006), Hammer of the Witches (2015), and Existence Is Futile (2021). Vocalist Dani Filth is the only remaining founding member.
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Read more:
- The Covert Social Satire of Cradle of Filth, and Other Horrors
- The Divisive Nature of Cradle of Filth
- Cradle of Filth Frontman Dani Filth on Dense Albums, Sexual Imagery and Embracing the Archaic
3. Dimmu Borgir
Dimmu Borgir is a Norwegian black metal band from Oslo, Norway, formed in 1993. Dimmu borgir means “dark cities” or “dark fortresses” in Icelandic and Old Norse. The name is derived from a volcanic formation in Iceland, Dimmuborgir. The band has been through numerous line-up changes over the years, with guitarist Silenoz and Vocalist Shagrath being the only founding members left. The band is often praised for their innovative use of synthesizers and orchestral accompaniment, and are considered one of the best black metal bands out there.
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Read more:
- Dimmu Borgir Drummer Dariusz “Daray” Brzozowski Performs “Kings Of The Carnival Creation” In Playthrough Video
- ALBUM REVIEW: Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia (reissue) – Dimmu Borgir
4. Mayhem
Mayhem is a Norwegian black metal band formed in 1984 in Oslo, Norway and regarded as one of the pioneers of the influential Norwegian black metal scene. Mayhem’s career has been highly controversial, primarily due to the their violent stage performances, the suicide of original vocalist Pelle “Dead” Ohlin in 1991, multiple church burnings influenced by the band and the murder of guitarist Øystein Aarseth by former band member Varg Vikernes, then of Burzum, in 1993.
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Read more:
- Mayhem: Meet The Band With The Wildest Story Ever Told
- Mayhem: The chaos of a true Black Metal story
- The murderous story of Mayhem, the band death could not kill
- Rolling Stone: Mayhem’s Long, Dark Road to Reviving a Black-Metal Classic
5. Sodom
Sodom is a German thrash metal trio from Gelsenkirchen, formed in 1981. Along with the bands Kreator and Destruction, Sodom is considered one of the “big three” of Teutonic thrash metal. While all three bands created a sound that would influence death metal, Sodom’s music style would greatly influence many late-1980s and early-1990s black metal bands, among others.
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Read more:
- Why German Thrash Icons Sodom Always Write About War
- SODOM’s Tom Angelripper “We Wanted To Be The Heaviest Band In The F***Ing World”
6. Darkthrone
Darkthrone is an influential Norwegian metal band and are regarded as one of the best black metal bands of all time. They formed in 1986 as a death metal band under the name Black Death. In 1991, the band embraced a black metal style influenced by Bathory and Celtic Frost and became one of the leading bands in the Norwegian black metal scene. Of all the major second-wave black metal bands to emerge from Norway during the early 1990s, only a handful — Mayhem, Emperor, Enslaved, and Ulver — have achieved the same exalted status and international recognition as Darkthrone.
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Read more:
- The Evolution Of Darkthrone, In The Words Of Fenriz
- A Blaze in the Northern Sky – Darkthrone: Album Review (Pitchfork)
7. Satyricon
Satyricon is a Norwegian black metal band, and the first one in the genre to join a multi-national record label (EMI). Their line-up over the years has constantly revolved around a stable core of multi-instrumentalist Sigurd “Satyr” Wongraven and drum powerhouse Kjetil Vidar “Frost” Haraldstad. The band’s first album, 1994’s Dark Medieval Times (recorded in 1993), showed off the fascination Satyricon had with the Middle Ages and featured raw black metal blast beats produced by Frost, mixed with acoustic guitar and flute. On their next album, The Shadowthrone, this medieval spirit was continued. Rock Hard journalist Wolf-Rüdiger Mühlmann wrote that Satyricon reached their “very early zenith” with that album and Nemesis Divina.
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Read more:
- Last Men Standing: How Satyricon Finally Settled For Success
- Satyricon’s Satyr on Black Metal’s Complicated History: “I’m Not Gonna Apologize”
- Satyricon: Years of Rebellious Extravagance
8. Dissection
Dissection was a black/death metal and later melodic death metal band from Strömstad, Sweden. The band was formed in 1989 by Jon Nödtveidt. In 1990, Dissection played their first live show with death metal act Entombed. In the same year, they recorded and released their first demo titled “The Grief Prophecy”. The band later on released its first EP in 1991. They released their third and final full-length album Reinkaos in April 2006, before disbanding that June. Nödtveidt said he had “reached the limitations of music as a tool for expressing what I want to express, for myself and the handful of others that I care about.” They disbanded in 2006, followed by Nödtveidt’s suicide.
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9. Venom
Venom is an English black metal band formed in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne. Coming to prominence towards the end of the new wave of British heavy metal, Venom’s first two albums—Welcome to Hell (1981) and Black Metal (1982)—are considered a major influence on thrash metal and extreme metal in general. Venom’s second album proved influential enough that its title was used as the name of the extreme metal subgenre of black metal.
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Read more:
- The true story of Venom, the most influential NWOBHM band of them all
- Forging Black Metal: Cronos Of Venom Talks About The Genesis Of A Genre
- How Venom Accidentally Bootlegged Their Own Black Metal History
10. Bathory
Bathory was a Swedish extreme metal band, formed in Vällingby by Quorthon (Thomas Forsberg) in 1983. It is regarded as a pioneer of both black metal and Viking metal. Quorthon remained the main songwriter and member of Bathory for more than two decades. Bathory’s development from the rawest form of embryonic black metal, to thrash, death, and back to its self-devised Viking-themed black metal, has mirrored and regularly defined the genre’s very evolution. Bathory disbanded after Quorthon’s death in 2004. The band is named after the infamous Hungarian countess Elizabeth Báthory.
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Read more:
- Bathory: the triumph and tragedy of the man who invented black metal
- BATHORY: The Blackened Chronicles
Honorable mentions
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