How does Black Metal work?

To answer this question I'll examine Darkthrone's seminal 1991 LP "A Blaze in the Northern Sky". One of the most vicious, chaotic releases of the genre at that time (though many (including myself) would argue that it still holds that title), it embodies black metal thought better than perhaps any other album. It's for this reason that I have chosen it to be the "ambassador" of the genre. A song from the album can be heard on a fan-created MySpace located here

One of the first things that you’ll notice when listening is the harsh, almost painful-to-listen-to guitar tone. It’s been manipulated to make the music more violent and really hard to make out exactly what the guitarist is playing. This is exemplary of BM’s use of alienation and destruction to get across its message of the value of the individual/rejection of collectivism.

Further increasing the potency of this message, the riffs beneath the guitar tone are active rejections of popular structures and scales. They step out of the “comfort” of seven-note scales (such as the major, minor scales that are used most commonly in Western music) and branch out into uncommonly-used chromatics – something of a black spot on the musical spectrum. In addition to this, you get the feeling that some riffs “go on for too long/not long enough” – your understanding of musical structure gets violated by “A Blaze in the Northern Sky”. Now if that’s not a violently individualistic rejection of collectivist ideas I don’t know what is.

The song’s drumming further alienates the listener – it’s extremely crude and aggressive, alternating between blastbeats (see the Immortal and Keep of Kalessin videos in my previous post for examples of this technique) and brutally simplistic beats.

Vocals are screamed and layered quite heavily with reverb. Similar to the guitar tone, in a way – it’s a more violent, alienating (and therefore effective) way of delivering the band’s musical message. As you’d expect, the lyrics are dark, violent and somewhat cryptic, keeping in line with the violent/alienating nature of the album, the band and the style as a whole. Have a look at the title track’s lyrics –

Hear a Haunting Chant
Lying in the Northern wind
As the Sky turns Black
clouds of Melancholy
rape the Beams
of a Devoid Dying Sun
and the Distant Fog approaches

Coven of forgotten Delight
Hear the Pride of a Northern Storm
Triumphant sight on a Northern Sky

Where the days are Dark
and Night the Same
Moonlight Drank the Blood
of a thousand Pagan men

It took ten times a hundred Years
Before the King on the Northern Throne
was brought Tales of the crucified one

Coven of renewed Delight;
A Thousand Years have passed since then -
Years of Lost Pride and Lust

Souls of Blasphemy,
hear a Haunting Chant -

We are a Blaze in the Northern Sky
The next thousand Years Are OURS

The way the song ends with an outright declaration of war to (what is presumably) the current order and its conventions says it all, really.