What is BLACK METAL?

New day new metal genre introduction.
On todays menu is a sub-genre called BLACK METAL.
Let's start.

Black metal belongs to the Extreme Metal term that covers a bunch of extreme styles such as death metal, grindcore, doom metal, black metal etc.

WHAT IS BLACK METAL?
Black metal is a style of extreme metal music. It is well known for its heavily distorted guitar, screaming almost shrieking high pitched vocals, fast tempo with a lot of blast beats and unconventional music structure that really creates a dark almost scary ambient. Black metal musicians usually cover their faces with so called corpse paint which is creepy black and white paint so they look even scarier.
Lyrical theme is often satanism, occult, attacking christianity and other religions and the nature world (for example forests, trees, darkness etc.)

HISTORY OF BLACK METAL:
Most of the extreme metal genres were influenced by thrash metal and so was black metal.
It all started during the 1980s whit so called first wave of black metal with bands such as Bathory, Venom, Merciful Fate, Hellhammer and Celtic Frost.
But for black metal itself i think the most important wave of them all is definitely Second wave of black metal that emerged in 1990s. The Norwegian scene was the mainstone in the black metal evolution with bands such as Mayhem, Darkthrone, Burzum, Immortal, Emperor, Satyricon and Gorgoroth. Those bands really defined the black metal genre and with this Norwegian second wave came some of the best Swedish black metal scene with bands such as Dark Funeral, Marduk and Nifelheim.
On the wings of second wave of black metal many bands started to emerge such as Sacramentum, Lord Belial, Nokturnal Mortum, Vinterland etc.
Black metal is also often associated with famous chruch burnings in Norway. It attracted massive media attention when it was revealed that its members of the early Norwegian black metal scene had been responsible for two murders and a wave of church burnings in Norway. And when they were interviewed they all said the fully support church burnings and that they hope it will be more of 'em in the future.
With all of these great bands i think a band called Emperor is the godfather of black metal.

BLACK METAL NOWDAYS:
Since the 1990s many bands emerged and created their unique style of black metal such as Atmospheric Black Metal, Depressive Black Metal, Industrial Black Metal, Symphonic Black Metal, Blackened Death Metal etc. so we again have many other sub-genres that evolved with black metal just like with DEATH METAL (link to the article i wrote yesterday about death metal here on steemit).
Now we have bands like Behemoth, Watain, Batushka, Absu, 1349 and many more that really are worth mentioning because they really do play some of the best black metal you'll ever hear.

CONCLUSION:
With all metal genres i still think black metal is the most underground and non-maintream genre so this is probably the reason why it has so much true metal fans all over the world while it is basically unknown to most of the population.

So that was a quick introduction to black metal. I hope you enjoyed reading it.