Barely True Norwegian Black Metal

Unblack metal (often called Christian black metal) is a subgenre of black metal that retains the style’s sonic hallmarks—tremolo‑picked guitars, blast‑beat drumming, shrieked or rasped vocals, icy atmospheres, and raw-to-epic production—while replacing the genre’s traditionally anti‑Christian or Satanic themes with explicitly Christian, biblical, or theologically reflective lyrics and imagery. Musically, it spans raw, second‑wave orthodoxy to symphonic and melodic variants, sometimes incorporating folk, doom, or death‑metal elements. Culturally, it is both a musical form and a counter‑position within extreme metal, asserting that the aesthetics of darkness, struggle, and catharsis can be redirected toward Christian spirituality, spiritual warfare, and hope.