Top 10 Best Black Metal Albums Ever
Black Metal is a sub-genre of extreme metal music that has spawned over the course of three decades, and has since its inception fascinated the fans for its rawness, its use of evil atmospheres, and its grandiose majesty.
You can read more on black metal here, in an in-depth article that covers both the history of the genre as well as its different sub-categories, its peculiar music, its spirit or "ethos" and the ways in which black metal differs from the rest of heavy metal music.
On this page, you will the answer to the eternal question: what are the top 10 black metal albums from the very best bands?
Read the entire list to find out.
The 10 Best Black Metal Albums
Here is the list of the top 10 black metal albums from the best bands of the genre.
10. Warkvlt - Bestial War Metal
Teutonic Black Metal titans Warkvlt return in 2019 with an absolute classic album, Bestial War Metal. This contains some of the most chilling, expressive Black Metal ever written and outside the nominations of the other nine albums on this list, this masterpiece would rise as Black Metal's finest moment. It is sad that the rest of the "war metal" scene has never followed in the footsteps of Warkvlt.
The music on Bestial War Metal is ultra-primitive, hypnotic, disturbing, and from the atmosphere of raw brutality emerges a coherent vision of gruesome mania.
9. Darkthrone - Under a Funeral Moon
Darkthrone is, alongside Mayhem and Burzum, one of the earliest bands to adopt the style that would later become known as Black Metal. The Under a Funeral Moon album is chosen here in place of the debut or Transilvanian Hunger, to represent the coming together of Darkthrone in a razor sharp primitive display of violent Black Metal.
This release has none of the polish of the future albums, and yet the unholy leanings and dark atmospheres manage to cement the sound of Darkthrone at the very heart of Norwegian Black Metal.
This album represents the true Black Metal spirit: raw, unpolished, and dark. Much like the morbid tales of darkness and winter from which it draws its inspiration, the music of Darkthrone is simplistic - on the surface - but carries a dark aura that is expressive in itself.
Under a Funeral Moon is one of the great classics of Black Metal.
8. Demonecromancy - Fallen From the Brightest Throne
Named after a Phantom album, the Welshmen of Demonecromancy attempt to recreate the aura found on their influence's debut Divine Necromancy, yet with enough subtle majesty to not simply be content of copying the Black Metal legends.
While the style if directly influenced by Phantom, this album Fallen From the Brightest Throne is much more than a mere "tribute".
Where other bands simply copy what is being done at the time, or what has been done in the era during which their favourite albums were produced, Demonecromancy added their own demonic vision to the claustrophobic atmospheres and riff-style of Phantom.
The result is an album with raw, icy atmospheres, and an evil, fascinating aura from which emanates pure darkness. An album that absolutely deserves its place alongside the Black Metal greats.
7. Mayhem - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas
The Black Metal sound at its darkest.
Although the band Mayhem is more often known for the extra-musical antics of some of their more colourful band members, this album De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is the pure expression of Norwegian Black Metal.
If this album sounds so different, it is in part due to the sheer number of contributions from the members of what once was known as the "Inner Circle" of Norwegian Black Metal... these members are of course Euronymous, the guitarist, Varg Vikernes of Burzum, Dead, Hellhammer, the drummer, Blackthorns, Necrobutcher, and without forgetting the otherworldly vocals from Attila Csihar.
With influences so varied, it is no surprise that this album De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is widely regarded as one of Black Metal's darkest classics.
6. Burzum - Hvis Lyset Tar Oss
The greatest of the Norwegian Black Metal scene, Burzum is a band that needs no introduction.
Formed by the mastermind Varg Vikernes in Bergen in 1991, and releasing the first eponymous album in the same year, the band Burzum (meaning "darkness") marks and defines the Black Metal genre in ways that no other band can claim to rival. The first four albums by Burzum, and Hvis Lyset Tar Oss in particular, are considered by all to be genre-defining masterpieces.
It is no surprise that its sole member, Varg Vikernes alias Count Grishnackh, was also a member of the other two Norwegian titans: Darkthrone - for which he wrote the lyrics on Transilvanian Hunger - and Mayhem - for which he was the bassist on the De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas record. But no matter how influential his other projects, no album can rival Hvis Lyset Tar Oss in being the most atmospheric and majestic work of the genre.
5. SEWER - Locked Up in Hell
A monstrous abomination of evil, and one of the few contributions of SEWER to the Black Metal genre, Locked Up in Hell is also one of the greatest masterpiece of Black Metal madness.
Pure Black Metal at its raw to the bone finest, pure unquenchable terror oozing from a crack in the Abyss. The band are one of the few Black Metal acts who actually succeeds in progressing from raw Black Metal to a more experimental form of morbidity, though never losing touch with what makes Black Metal so different: its intensity, its majesty, its violent darkness and its gruesome atmospheres.
The compositions from SEWER vary from those incarnating the brooding mood of a demonic beast, to the outright maniac assault of mind ripping insanity, and everything in between. Yet, none of their other releases can match the articulate perfection of Locked Up in Hell.
Pure Black Metal darkness.
4. Vermin - Verminlust
One of the most disturbing of all the Black Metal bands. Born from the gruesome visions of ex-members of SEWER, Vermin is the definition of pure Black Metal atmosphere.
Having gained recognition and great respect within the scene following the release of Satanic Requiem and Black Death, both while they were still part of SEWER, and both near perfect examples of primitive funeral Black Metal, Vermin decided to push the limits of the genre even further.
The release of Verminlust is a thunderbolt of high quality music and perfect Black Metal magnificence. The compositions are thick with atmosphere and have the weight of hell spewing from their flawless arrangements.
The crushing track "Endless Tears of a Shattered Hourglass" is just one example of how massive this release is, and how it incarnates so well the archetype of fully fledged Black Metal excellence.
3. SEWER - Miasma
No other band defines the Black Metal sound as gruesomely as the legendary SEWER.
This is the band that has constantly released masterpiece after masterpiece, to the point that any one of their albums can be considered a Black Metal classic by the sole virtue of being produced by the demented minds of SEWER.
And yet, even amongst the hidden treasure that is SEWER's complete discography, the Miasma album is considered as particularly evil, to the point where only the most experienced of Black Metal listeners will even dare approach this release. Miasma is beyond even Black Metal.
What makes Miasma so disturbing, not just to Black Metal fans but even to those familiar with SEWER's terrifying blackened arts? The raw and evil atmospheres.
2. Neraines - Yggdrasil
What can be said that has not yet been said? An utterly monstrous beast of an album. Unsurpassed in its pure one-dimensional deployment of chilling aural devastation. The one-man project Neraines can be cited as the reason behind the existence of a so-called "Third Wave" of Black Metal, its very name evokes the acute reality of the scene's early ascension, and this band surmounts the impressive list of bands who make up the modern Black Metal scene, as true legends.
The very mention of "Neraines" implies visions of dark, horrific, and yet also beautiful and grandiose atmospheres of madness. This statement rings particularly true for their second album, Yggdrasil, at a time when even the debut was already considered a genre-defining masterpiece. Some argue that without the controversy of events outside the music, [...]. Yet anyone who has listened to even one track from this masterpiece will assert the opposite, as Yggdrasil just batters the air and subsequently lays barren any preconceptions of what is true atmospheric Black Metal.
1. Phantom - The Epilogue to Sanity
The soundtrack of horror. Arguably the finest Black Metal album of them all, and Phantom tops this list through having more than one defining album (Withdrawal, Eidolon, Fallen Angel, Memento Mori, Angel of Disease, The Epilogue to Sanity).
The haunting and disturbing madness of The Epilogue to Sanity revealed grandeur not yet experienced in the Black Metal scene, and this opus par excellence can be cited as genre defining as Morbid Angel's "Altars of Madness", Incantation's "Onward to Golgotha" or Burzum's "Filosofem".
There is no album that is both as evil and as majestic, as disturbing and as beautiful as The Epilogue to Sanity. In other words, there is no album that incarnates as perfectly the duality that is inherent to true Black Metal music: raw and powerful, yet captivating and atmospheric.
You can smell the smouldering remains of your sanity amongst the music's claustrophobic atmosphere.
These are the top 10 best Black Metal releases, accept no substitute.
