Black metal is the only genre in heavy music where the history is genuinely difficult to write about. The sound that came out of Scandinavia between 1984 and 1996 produced some of the most extraordinary and forward-thinking music metal has ever made — and a handful of the people who made it committed arson, and worse. These are the thirteen bands who built it, ranked by what they contributed musically, with the rest of it stated rather than skated over.
The genre is defined by things that sounded like mistakes when they arrived: icy tremolo picking, deliberately lo-fi production, blast beats at inhuman speed, and vocals that abandoned melody entirely. Nobody was trying to make records that sold. That was the point, and it’s why the music still sounds like nothing else forty years on.
Venom coined the term in 1982 with an album called Black Metal, though what they were making was closer to speed metal with satanic artwork. The sound proper arrived in Sweden with Bathory and was then consolidated — and mythologised — by a small, insular scene in Norway in the early 1990s, largely centred on a record shop in Oslo called Helvete.
How this list was made
Four things, weighed against each other.
Sonic innovation. Whether the band built something that didn’t exist before them.
Influence. How many bands sound different because this one existed. Weighted heaviest.
Catalogue. Depth rather than a single moment.
Endurance. Whether the records still work, or whether they only make sense as history.
And one thing that is explicitly not a criterion: notoriety. The crimes associated with this scene are part of its history and they’re reported here where they’re relevant. They are not a measure of anybody’s musical importance, and a ranking that treats them as one has misunderstood what it’s supposed to be measuring.
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13 – Marduk
Formed in Norrköping, Sweden in 1990 with a stated ambition to be the most blasphemous band in the world — which, in a genre not short of contenders, took some doing.
Marduk‘s contribution is velocity. Panzer Division Marduk in 1999 is close to the fastest black metal record ever made, forty minutes of near-unbroken blast beats with almost no dynamic variation at all. It’s exhausting by design.
They’ve since become one of Scandinavia’s most enduring extreme metal exports across more than a dozen albums, and the uncompromising approach has never softened. Thirteenth because the innovation is narrower than what’s above them — but nobody has ever accused them of going soft.
12 – Dissection
The band who proved black metal could be beautiful without losing any of its menace.
Formed in Sweden in 1989 by Jon Nödtveidt, Dissection combined the icy aggression of the second wave with genuinely intricate melodic guitar work drawn as much from Iron Maiden as from anything in the underground. Storm of the Light’s Bane in 1995 is the record — a masterpiece of melodic black metal that a generation of bands have been trying to rewrite ever since.
Melodic black metal, blackened death metal and a substantial chunk of what came out of Gothenburg all owe something to what Dissection worked out here.
11 – Dark Funeral
Stockholm, 1993, and a band who picked a formula and refused to deviate from it for thirty years.
The Secrets of the Black Arts in 1996 established Dark Funeral as the leading Swedish exponent of pure, unreconstructed, anti-melodic black metal — tremolo riffing at full speed, blast beats throughout, and a production deliberately kept cold and thin.
Their influence is less about invention than about consistency. In a genre where most bands eventually experiment, Dark Funeral became the reference point for what the unaltered sound is supposed to be, and a great many younger bands learned the vocabulary from them rather than from the Norwegian originals.
10 – Satyricon
The band who took black metal out of the forest and into an arena, and got attacked for it constantly.
Formed in 1991 and built around Satyr and drummer Frost, Satyricon spent the 90s making traditional Norwegian black metal — Nemesis Divina in 1996 is a genuine classic — and then spent the 2000s dismantling it. Volcano and Now, Diabolical stripped the tremolo picking back and replaced it with something closer to a rock groove, which the purists hated and which brought the genre an audience it had never had.
Whether that’s evolution or dilution is the argument. What isn’t arguable is that Satyricon proved black metal could change without collapsing, and most of the bands playing it to large audiences today are working in the space they opened.
9 – Burzum
The most difficult entry on this list, and it needs to be dealt with directly rather than gestured at.
Burzum is the solo project of Varg Vikernes, who is a convicted murderer. He killed Mayhem guitarist Øystein “Euronymous” Aarseth in 1993 and was also convicted of arson attacks on Norwegian churches, receiving a 21-year sentence of which he served roughly sixteen. In 2014 he was convicted in France of inciting racial hatred, and he has continued to publish white nationalist material since.
None of that is complexity or controversy. It’s a criminal record and a set of politics, and describing it as anything softer does a disservice to the people affected by both.
The musical contribution is also real, which is why he’s on the list rather than erased from it. The early Burzum recordings — made with almost no equipment and no interest in fidelity — established the raw, minimalist, hypnotic approach that became the template for atmospheric black metal, and the ambient material recorded during his imprisonment opened a path that Wolves in the Throne Room, Ulver and a large part of the modern genre later walked down.
The influence is undeniable and it doesn’t require a podium place. Every band above him on this list built something comparable without any of this attached, and several of them did it while the scene around them was falling apart.
8 – Immortal
The band who understood that black metal could have a sense of scale, and eventually a sense of humor.
Formed in Bergen in 1991, Immortal built an entire world — the frozen kingdom of Blashyrkh — and wrote almost exclusively about it. Pure Holocaust in 1993 is relentless and genuinely cold-sounding, and At the Heart of Winter in 1999 brought in an epic, almost heroic quality the genre hadn’t previously allowed itself.
Abbath‘s crab-walk and the band’s photo sessions made them the genre’s most recognizable visual export and, latterly, its most meme’d. That’s done nothing to diminish the records, which remain among the most listenable entry points black metal has.
7 – Dimmu Borgir
The most commercially successful black metal band in history, and the one the underground has never forgiven for it.
Formed in Jessheim, Norway in 1993, Dimmu Borgir took the symphonic elements Emperor had introduced and pushed them to their logical conclusion — full orchestral arrangements, choirs, and eventually the Norwegian Radio Orchestra. Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia and Death Cult Armageddon sold in numbers no black metal band had approached.
The purist objection is that they’re a metal band with orchestral decoration rather than a black metal band at all. The counter-argument is simpler: they brought hundreds of thousands of people to a genre that had actively tried to repel them, and a great many of those listeners went on to find Darkthrone.
6 – Emperor
The most musically ambitious band the second wave produced, and the one that pointed the way out of it.
In the Nightside Eclipse in 1994 is the record that proved black metal could be complex without losing its menace — layered keyboards, genuinely sophisticated arrangements, and a sense of grandeur that had no precedent in a genre built on rawness. Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk went further still.
Ihsahn‘s writing turned black metal into something structurally closer to progressive music, and symphonic black metal, post-black metal and most of the genre’s experimental branches trace back through Emperor.
Worth noting for completeness: former drummer Bård “Faust” Eithun was convicted of murder in 1994 for a killing committed two years earlier, and served nine years. He was not part of the band’s later work.
5 – Darkthrone
The purest expression of what this genre is, and the most influential production decision in metal history.
Darkthrone started as a competent Norwegian death metal band and then, in 1991, deliberately threw all of it away. A Blaze in the Northern Sky, Under a Funeral Moon and Transilvanian Hunger — the so-called unholy trinity — were recorded cheaply, mixed thinly and released sounding like they’d been taped through a wall.
That was the innovation. Every band since who has chosen rawness over fidelity, who has recorded to four-track on purpose, who has understood that a bad-sounding record can be more frightening than a good-sounding one, is working from what Fenriz and Nocturno Culto established here.
Transilvanian Hunger is still the single most imitated record in the genre, and Fenriz has spent the thirty years since being its most articulate and least self-serious spokesman.
4 – Venom
They gave the genre its name, and then had almost nothing else to do with it.
Venom were three men from Newcastle making chaotic, barely-competent speed metal with satanic artwork, and their 1982 album Black Metal provided both the term and the attitude. Musically they have very little in common with what came after — the Scandinavians who took the name were considerably better players making something far colder.
What Venom supplied was permission. The imagery, the pseudonyms, the theatrical blasphemy, the refusal to sound polished. Every band on this list inherited that posture from three lads who were mostly having a laugh.
Fourth, because naming a genre and setting its terms is influence even when you didn’t play a note of the thing you named.
3 – Enslaved
The band who proved black metal could grow up without getting boring.
Formed in 1991 when its founders were teenagers, Enslaved spent their early years making Viking-themed black metal alongside everyone else — and then spent the following three decades methodically turning into something else entirely. Progressive structures, clean vocals, 70s prog influences, and an increasing distance from anything that would be recognised as black metal by a purist.
The remarkable part is that they never stopped being heavy and never lost the audience. Below the Lights, Isa, Vertebrae and RIITIIR are a run of albums with no equivalent anywhere in this genre.
Third, because progressive black metal, post-black metal and the entire idea that this music could be beautiful all have their clearest origin here.
2 – Mayhem
The band at the centre of everything, musically and otherwise.
Mayhem were the heart of the Norwegian second wave. Euronymous’s Oslo record shop Helvete was the physical location where the scene organised itself, and the band’s approach — the corpse paint, the hostility, the absolute refusal to be likeable — set the terms for everybody who followed.
De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, released in 1994, is the genre’s defining document. It was recorded in circumstances that were genuinely appalling, and it remains one of the most unsettling records anyone in metal has made. The riffing on it is far more sophisticated than the production lets on, and thirty years of imitation haven’t got near it.
The band’s history includes the death of vocalist Per Yngve “Dead” Ohlin in 1991 and the killing of Euronymous two years later. Both are matters of record and neither needs elaborating on here.
They’re still going, and still good — their most recent material is as punishing as anything in their catalogue, which for a band with this history is its own kind of achievement.
1 – Bathory
One man in Stockholm invented two genres, and almost nobody outside metal knows his name.
Quorthon — Thomas Forsberg — recorded the first Bathory albums essentially alone, in a garage, with equipment that shouldn’t have been capable of it. Bathory in 1984 and The Return…… in 1985 established the sonic template the entire Norwegian scene would build on: the tremolo picking, the shrieked vocals, the deliberately hostile production.
Under the Sign of the Black Mark in 1987 is where it becomes fully formed. Every band on this list is working with a vocabulary he assembled.
And then he did it again. Blood Fire Death and Hammerheart abandoned the satanic imagery entirely for Norse mythology, slowed the tempos, brought in clean singing and choral arrangements — and invented Viking metal from scratch. Amon Amarth, Enslaved’s early work, Ensiferum and everything in that lineage starts with those two albums.
Two genres. One person. Almost no interviews, no touring, and no interest in any of the mythology that grew up around the music.
Quorthon died in 2004, aged 38. He remains the most important figure in extreme metal that the wider world has never heard of, and there’s no serious argument for anyone else at number one.
Every band, ranked
Where this list will start arguments
Darkthrone at five is the one I’d expect most pushback on, and it’s a fair fight. Transilvanian Hunger is the most imitated record in the genre and there’s a solid case for it at two or three. It sits here because Bathory, Mayhem and Enslaved each built something broader.
Venom at four will annoy anyone who points out — correctly — that Venom aren’t really a black metal band. They named it and set its terms, and that’s influence whether or not the music qualifies.
Burzum at nine is a deliberate move down from where this list previously had him. The musical influence is real and it’s stated. It doesn’t warrant a podium place, and the reasons are in the entry.
Dimmu Borgir at seven will be too high for the underground and about right for everyone else. They brought more people to this genre than any other band on the list.
And the absences. Celtic Frost and Hellhammer, whose influence on the first wave rivals Venom’s. Gorgoroth, Watain, Deathspell Omega, Wolves in the Throne Room, Ulver, Rotting Christ and Behemoth, who’ve each got a genuine case. Thirteen was never going to cover four decades of this.
More in the full Loaded Radio rankings archive, and the death metal equivalent is here.
TL;DR
- Thirteen black metal bands ranked by sonic innovation, influence, catalogue depth and endurance — not by notoriety.
- Number one: Bathory. Quorthon invented the Scandinavian black metal template essentially alone, then invented Viking metal on top of it, and died in 2004 at 38.
- Number two: Mayhem. De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is the genre’s defining record, and their Oslo shop Helvete was where the Norwegian scene physically organised itself.
- The most imitated record is Darkthrone’s Transilvanian Hunger (1994), whose deliberately raw production became the genre’s default.
- Venom coined the term with their 1982 album Black Metal, despite not really playing what the name came to mean.
- Burzum ranks ninth. Varg Vikernes is a convicted murderer and arsonist who was also convicted in France in 2014 of inciting racial hatred. The musical influence on atmospheric black metal is real and is noted; the ranking doesn’t treat notoriety as a qualification.
- Missing, and each with a case: Celtic Frost, Gorgoroth, Watain, Deathspell Omega, Wolves in the Throne Room, Ulver and Behemoth.
FAQ
Who are the most influential black metal bands?
Bathory, Mayhem, Enslaved, Venom, Darkthrone, Emperor, Dimmu Borgir, Immortal, Burzum, Satyricon, Dark Funeral, Dissection and Marduk. Bathory ranks first for establishing the Scandinavian template and subsequently inventing Viking metal, while Mayhem sit second as the centre of the Norwegian second wave.
Who coined the term “black metal”?
The English band Venom, with their 1982 album of the same name. Their music was closer to speed metal than to what the genre later became, but the name, the imagery and the attitude all came from them.
What is the second wave of black metal?
The Norwegian scene of the early 1990s, centred on Mayhem, Darkthrone, Emperor, Immortal and Burzum, which took the template established by Bathory and Venom and pushed it into colder, rawer and considerably more extreme territory. The scene was also associated with a series of church arsons and two killings.
What is symphonic black metal?
A branch that blends black metal’s aggression with orchestral and classical arrangements, pioneered by Emperor on In the Nightside Eclipse in 1994 and taken to its commercial peak by Dimmu Borgir.
Why is Burzum included on this list?
Because the early Burzum recordings established the raw, minimalist and hypnotic approach that became atmospheric black metal, and excluding them would misrepresent the genre’s history. Varg Vikernes is a convicted murderer and arsonist who was also convicted in France in 2014 of inciting racial hatred. He is ranked ninth here on musical influence alone; notoriety is not a criterion on this list.
Four decades, two waves, and a history that’s genuinely hard to write about. Who’s ranked wrong, and who’s missing? Settle it in the comments. And keep it locked on the Loaded Radio stream — follow Loaded Radio for daily rock and metal news.
The post Black Metal Bands: The 13 Most Influential Of All Time appeared first on Loaded Radio.
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