Black metal

I love Norwegian Black metal.
A lot of people have only a vague and wrong idea of what it is and they usually call it Death metal.
Black and Death metal is not the same.
I'm not going to explain the difference, look it up yourself. Just remember when you're talking about those corpse painted church burners in Norway you're talking about Black Metal.

A lot of the black metal bands have satanic and anti-religious (usually anti-christian) lyrics and images. That is not why I like it, I actually couldn't care less if they were christian or atheists.
But there's something I wanna say right now to clear up some misunderstandings. As far as I've understood (and I'm not expert by any means) the so called satanists do not believe in or worship Satan. Satan is a biblical figure. To believe in Satan like most people think of him you have to be some kind of christian. To worship Satan you must be some sort of christian that got it all wrong.
Most satanists believe in empowerment of the individual, you're your own god.
I think they use "Satan" as a symbol of anti-religion or something like that.

Don't confuse this with my personal opinions, I'm a nofuckingclueist. I do not have anything against any religion.

But fuck that crap. I like Black metal because it's scary and fucking awesome.
I'm going to introduce you to some of my favorite Black Metal bands, don't worry about their lyrics, it's impossible to understand anyway, just let them scare you. Black metal is like a horror film for your ears.

Windir

Windir was fucking great.
It started of as an one man project by Valfar (R.I.P) and then turned in to a full band when the music got to complicated for Valfar to play everything himself.
One man bands are kind of popular in Black Metal.
Actually Valfar didn't like to call his music black metal, he preferred to call it Sognemetal. He was from a place called Sogn and basically all of his music was inspired by local history. He wanted to separate his music from the "Satan worshipers" in the Black metal scene. But all in all, his music was Black metal, brilliant black metal.
The music itself is a mix of traditional Norwegian folk music and Black metal and most of his lyrics are in an ancient version of his dialect called Saognamaol. (Oh! There Windir started playing on iTunes, I have it on shuffle). Saognamaol is a weird language, even though it's Norwegian I hardly understand half of his lyrics.
Check out Windir here:
www.windir.no
Make sure to check out the song Arntor, Ein Windir in the sound section!

Immortal.

The kings of Blashyrkh!
These guys are the guys you will find occupying the top 9 spots in all the "top 10 most ridiculous black metal pics". Don't be fooled though, Immortal is fucking awesome.
I guess Immortal were among the first to start the Bergen Black Metal scene.
Immortal was founded by living legends Abbath Doom Occulta and Demonaz Doom Occulta. Imortal are not "satanists" either, but they have come up with their own mythical kingdom, or hell if you want, called Blashyrkh which most of their songs are about.
Expect fast guitars, awesome drumming and the best vox in black metal by Abbath.
They broke up some years ago, but luckily they got back together even though Demonaz no longer can play guitar due to some illness (he can't play as fast as he needs to to be in Immortal) he is still with the band writing a lot of their music.

Check them out at:
http://www.immortalofficial.com/
http://www.myspace.com/immortalofficial

Satyricon

Ok..
well Satyricon is a weird band. It's only officially two guys in the band (Satyr and Frost) and they switch between making hardcore legendary black metal (like Mother North) to more mainstream Radio-friendly Black metal (like K.I.N.G, which I like by the way, I know, I like sellout BM...)
They're about to release a new album, which is going to be really interesting since their last album took a pretty drastic turn towards more mainstream metal, still good in my opinion, but more mainstream nonetheless.

Check them out (and their new song My Skin Is Cold) at:
http://www.satyricon.no/
http://www.myspace.com/satyricon (unfortunately only songs from their latest album)

Darkthrone

Darkthrone is just fucking great, True Norwegian Black Metal, Nasty and dirty.
Transylvaninan Hunger is what I think real black metal should sound like.
Their latest album F.O.A.D isn't really black metal, it's Evil rock, or at least that's what they call it on their album.
Darkthrone is just fucking great, no need to say more than that.

"modern metal, I don't give a fuck, ugh! I was raised on rock!" - Raised on Rock, F.O.A.D

Check them out at:
http://www.darkthrone.no
http://www.myspace.com/officialdarkthrone

I also like much more but don't feel like writing more at the moment, or actually don't know what to write..

Check out these bands:
Burzum (One man band by a complete fuck-up, but he made cool music back in the days.)
1349 (Fast and scary!)
Ulver (these guys make all kinds of music, but their black metal stuff is really good)
Enslaved (Viking black metal)
Dimmu Borgir (as a black metal fan I'm not allowed to say I like them, but I do. I fucking hate discussions about what's "true" and bullshit about being "sellout", they make great music.)


Make also sure you check out http://www.peterbeste.com/bm.html, Peter Beste has shot some of the most legendary black metal pics out there.

There you go... some Black metal