How to be Black Metal

If you have an interest in black metal, but don't know how you should go about being a supporter of black metal, than be sure to read this.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Unknown black metal band shirts
• A bullet belt
• Corpsepaint
• Black metal CD's
• Grimness

1. 

   If you want to be a supporter of the black metal scene you definitely need some albums, band shirts and posters from genre defining bands, such as Bathory, Emperor, Immortal, Burzum and Mayhem. Make sure you have CDs from more underground bands such as Lifelover, Shining, Silencer, Hate Forest, Weakling, Wolves in The Throne Room and so on. You should never get any merchandise from a band like Cradle of Filth. You should despise them. Use Metal Archives as a resource to learn more about bands.

2. 

   Next, you need to know how to dress black metal (you wouldn't want to go to a Watain show wearing some poser clothes now would you?). If you don't have any black metal shirts at all yet, than take a visit to http://www.plastichead.com/ which has a wealth of different band shirts. Make sure to wear black pants at all times with a black metal shirt, and of course you should wear a bullet belt and boots as well. To be extra black metal you could even put on some corpsepaint. The last thing to have is to grow, if you have not already, long hair!

3. 

   Once you know a decent amount about the bands and have the proper clothing, you should gain even more knowledge by reading all you can about black metal, a good place to start would be with the book Lords of Chaos by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind, which is an account of the early Norwegian black metal scene.

4. 

   Finally you should go out to a black metal gig whenever there is one in your area, if you live in Europe than this shouldn't be much of a problem, but in the United States a lot less black metal bands tour. Bands that have toured at least a couple of times in the US are Nachtmystium, Wolves In The Throne, Watain, Rotting Christ, Velnias and Satyricon.

Tips & Warnings

• Always try and find new bands to listen to, most will have a Myspace or be on Last.fm.
• It can take time to learn to like black metal, or to make someone else like it so don't give up.
• People may make negative assumptions about the music you support.
• Many black metal bands have Satanic themes to them, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they support that, and most of the fans generally do not.

Resources

• Metal Archives
• Plastic Head
• Last.fm

[chameleon]

on 12/6/2008 I'll have to scout out some of those bands for my son - he's got two of those parts down solid, just needs more unknown band t-shirts to fit right in! Thanks!

[chameleon]

on 12/6/2008 I'll have to scout out some of those bands for my son - he's got two of those parts down solid, just needs more unknown band t-shirts to fit right in! Thanks!

[sunshine11219]

on 11/23/2008 good to know

[ReuseItAll]

on 11/23/2008 Great information! Well thought out too.

[veryirie]

on 11/23/2008 Good read; anything is better than rap! :)