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experimental black metal

Experimental Black Metal

Norway · 1990s
DarkIntenseSadEpicDreamy

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Description

Experimental black metal is a boundary-pushing branch of black metal that blends the genre’s core harshness with unconventional composition, timbres, and aesthetics.

It commonly replaces or augments traditional tremolo-picked riffs and blast beats with dissonant harmonies, odd meters, through-composed forms, and unusual instrumentation (synths, saxophone, strings, prepared piano, electronics, noise). Vocals range from classic shrieks to chants, spoken word, harmonized clean passages, and processed textures.

Production can be deliberately lo‑fi and abrasive or hi‑fi and cinematic, but it is typically textural: layers of feedback, drones, and spectral effects are used as musical material. Lyrically, it gravitates toward esoteric philosophy, surrealism, urban decay, cosmic dread, and psychological or spiritual dislocation, prioritizing atmosphere and conceptual depth over orthodoxy.


Sources: Spotify, Wikipedia, Discogs, RYM, MB, user feedback and other online sources

History

Origins (early–mid 1990s)

Black metal’s second wave in Norway catalyzed an appetite for rule‑breaking. A small faction of musicians began to stretch the vocabulary beyond tremolo riffs and straight tremor-blast drumming, introducing chromaticism, jazz-tinged harmony, off-kilter rhythms, keyboards, and theatrical concepts. These early experiments laid the foundations for what would be called experimental or avant-garde black metal.

Late 1990s Pioneers

By the late 1990s, several Norwegian and European projects released recordings that challenged genre borders—using clean vocals alongside shrieks, odd time signatures, atonal or modal harmonic movement, and textural electronics. Their work reframed black metal as a platform for experimentation rather than a fixed style, legitimizing the fusion of extreme metal with contemporary classical ideas, industrial noise, and progressive rock forms.

2000s – Diversification and International Spread

In the 2000s the approach matured and globalized. French, Japanese, American, Finnish, and Eastern European artists adopted dissonant counterpoint, layered sound design, industrial programming, and free-jazz gestures. Concept albums and trilogies explored metaphysical and philosophical themes; studio production became a compositional tool—re-amping, granular processing, and microsampling blurred the lines between band and sound lab.

2010s–2020s – Cross-Pollination and New Palettes

The 2010s saw cross-pollination with post-black, blackgaze, psychedelic black metal, and blackened industrial. Extended techniques (microtonal guitars, prepared instruments), saxophone-led passages, modular synths, and live electronics entered the idiom. DIY platforms and small labels fostered an international network, while festival stages and academic circles increasingly recognized the style’s modernist ambitions. In the 2020s, experimental black metal remains a laboratory for form—embracing multimedia, site-specific performances, and studio-as-instrument composition while retaining black metal’s corrosive emotional core.

How to make a track in this genre

Core Palette and Instrumentation
•   Start with a black metal backbone (distorted guitars, bass, drums) but invite nonstandard voices: analog synths, modular systems, piano, strings, woodwinds (e.g., saxophone), found sounds, and noise devices. •   Use a wide dynamic spectrum: from barely audible drones to overwhelming walls of sound.
Harmony and Melody
•   Favor dissonance and modal ambiguity: stack seconds, tritones, and clusters; move in contrary motion; pivot on common tones rather than diatonic cadences. •   Explore nonstandard tunings or microtonal intervals (e.g., 19-TET bends, fretless glides). Chromatic voice-leading can keep motion tense without obvious key centers.
Rhythm and Structure
•   Alternate traditional blast beats with fractured grooves: polymeter (e.g., guitars in 5 while drums blast in 4), metric modulations, and sudden tempo displacements. •   Eschew verse–chorus. Consider through-composed forms, recurring cells, or large-scale crescendos/decrescendos. Insert noise interludes and electroacoustic bridges to reset the ear.
Timbre and Texture
•   Treat texture as harmony: layer bowed cymbals, feedback drones, and granular pads underneath riffs to create spectral “chords.” •   Employ re-amping, convolution (non-room IRs), ring modulation, tape warble, and parallel distortion to sculpt evolving tone clouds.
Vocals and Text
•   Combine harsh shrieks with spoken word, chant, throat singing, or harmonized cleans. Process selectively (band-pass, spring reverb, reverse delays) to place voices “inside” the texture. •   Write lyrics that support a conceptual arc—mythopoetic, philosophical, or urban-surreal—leaving space for instrumental narrative.
Production and Arrangement Tips
•   Balance extremes: let pristine, almost classical passages throw the subsequent blasts into sharper relief. •   Use EQ carving to keep dense layers intelligible; automate saturation and stereo width to make climaxes feel physically larger. •   Embrace accidents: circuit noise, room resonance, or tape hiss can become leitmotifs.
Workflow
    •   

    Sketch a tension map (peaks/valleys) before writing riffs.

     •   

    Compose two or three contrasting material families (riff-based, drone-based, and electroacoustic) and crossfade between them.

     •   

    Iterate orchestration last—treat mix moves as part of composition rather than post-process.

Best playlists

The Sound of Experimental Black Metal
The Sound of Experimental Black Metal
Every Noise at Once
Experimental Black Metal
Experimental Black Metal
Chosic
Experimental Black Metal Mix
Experimental Black Metal Mix
Spotify
Best of Experimental Black Metal
Best of Experimental Black Metal
volt.fm

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Related labels

His Wounds
His Wounds
American Decline Records
American Decline Records
Pulsating Putrefaction Records
Pulsating Putrefaction Records
Nekrogoat Heresy Productions
Nekrogoat Heresy Productions
Insurgency Records
Insurgency Records

Upcoming concerts

in this genre
Influenced by
Black Metal
Black metal is a form of extreme metal defined by fast tempos, tremolo‑picked guitar lines, blast‑beat drumming, shrieked or rasped vocals, and a deliberately raw, icy production aesthetic. Harmonically, it favors minor and modal collections (especially Aeolian and Phrygian), open-string drones, parallel fifths and fourths, tritones, and sparse or suspended chord voicings over blues-derived harmony. Arrangements often employ layered guitars, long-form song structures, and enveloping reverb to create a bleak, otherworldly atmosphere. The genre’s visual and thematic language is equally distinctive: corpse paint, monochrome artwork, and lyrics exploring anti-dogma, nature, pagan myth, cosmic nihilism, and misanthropy. While some scenes have been associated with controversy and extremism, the musical identity centers on sound, atmosphere, and aesthetics rather than any single ideology.
Avant-Garde Metal
Avant-garde metal is a branch of metal that embraces experimentation as a core principle. It extends the genre’s sonic vocabulary through unusual song forms, dissonant harmony, non-standard instrumentation, and an eagerness to fuse styles that traditionally sit outside heavy music. Where conventional metal often relies on riff-driven structures, avant-garde metal frequently employs through-composed forms, asymmetrical rhythms, and abrupt dynamic shifts. Its palette can include strings, woodwinds, brass, electronics, prepared instruments, and extended vocal techniques alongside distorted guitars and aggressive drums. Lyrically and conceptually, the style leans toward the surreal, the philosophical, and the theatrical. The result is a deliberately challenging, exploratory music that values atmosphere, texture, and surprise as much as impact and heaviness.
Progressive Metal
Progressive metal blends the ambition and extended song forms of progressive rock with the heaviness, timbre, and energy of heavy metal. It is characterized by complex arrangements, frequent time‑signature changes, virtuosic instrumental passages, thematic or concept‑driven albums, and a wide dynamic range from delicate, atmospheric sections to aggressive, high‑gain climaxes. Harmonically it draws on modal interchange, chromatic voice‑leading, and jazz‑fusion colors, while rhythmically it favors polymeters, polyrhythms, and metric modulation. Keyboards and layered production often add orchestral or cinematic scope.
Post-Rock
Post-rock is a style that uses traditional rock instrumentation—guitars, bass, drums, and often piano or strings—to create expansive textures, evolving soundscapes, and dynamic arcs rather than conventional verse–chorus songs. It emphasizes timbre, atmosphere, and gradual development: clean or lightly overdriven guitars drenched in delay and reverb, cyclical ostinatos, layered crescendos, and pronounced quiet–loud dynamics. Vocals, if present, are often sparse, wordless, or treated as another textural layer. The genre draws heavily from ambient, minimalism, krautrock, progressive and space rock, shoegaze, noise rock, and experimental practices, yielding music that can feel cinematic, contemplative, and emotionally cathartic.
Industrial
Industrial is an experimental electronic music tradition that uses abrasive timbres, mechanical rhythms, and transgressive aesthetics. Its sound palette often includes distorted drum machines, tape loops, metallic percussion, feedback, and found-object recordings alongside synthesizers and samplers. Emerging from late-1970s UK underground art and performance scenes, industrial foregrounds themes of dehumanization, technology, surveillance, and power. Releases frequently embrace anti-commercial presentation, stark graphic design, and confrontational performance art, treating the studio as a laboratory for sonic manipulation rather than a vehicle for conventional songcraft. While early industrial emphasized noise, tape processing, and avant-garde collage, later waves fused the style with dancefloor precision (EBM), rock and metal heft, and club-oriented production, giving rise to a broad post-industrial family that remains influential in experimental, electronic, and popular music.
Noise
Noise is an experimental music genre that uses non-traditional sound sources, distortion, feedback, and extreme dynamics as primary musical materials. Instead of emphasizing melody, harmony, or conventional rhythm, it focuses on texture, density, timbre, and the physical presence of sound. Practitioners sculpt saturated walls of sound, piercing feedback, metallic clatter, contact-mic scrapes, tape hiss, and electronic interference into works that can be confrontational or meditative. Performances often highlight process and immediacy—improvisation, body movement, and site-specific acoustics—while recordings can range from lo-fi cassette overload to meticulously layered studio constructions. Though rooted in early avant-garde ideas, the genre coalesced as a distinct practice in the late 1970s and 1980s, especially through Japan’s ‘Japanoise’ scene, and subsequently influenced numerous styles across industrial, punk-adjacent, and experimental electronic music.
Drone
Drone is a minimalist music genre defined by sustained tones, long durations, and extremely gradual change. Harmony is often static or centered on a single fundamental with subtle overtone shifts, while rhythm tends toward stasis or very slow pulses. Sound sources range from acoustic instruments (e.g., strings, organ, bagpipes, shruti box, tambura) to electronics (sine waves, oscillators, feedback, tape loops, and later digital synthesis and processing). Many composers favor just intonation or other alternative tuning systems to emphasize beating patterns, psychoacoustic effects, and the internal life of sound. Although drone as a sonic principle is ancient and global, the modern experimental genre cohered in the 1960s through the New York minimalists and related avant‑garde circles, then spread into ambient, experimental, and heavy music scenes. The focus is less on melody and more on timbre, resonance, and the phenomenology of listening.
Avant-Garde Black Metal
Avant-garde black metal is a boundary‑pushing strain of black metal that embraces experimental composition, unorthodox timbres, and genre hybridity. It retains core black‑metal signifiers—tremolo‑picked guitars, blast beats, and harsh vocals—while folding in dissonant harmonies, unusual time signatures, electronics, chamber instrumentation, and studio-as-instrument production. The result ranges from claustrophobic, abstract sound‑design to cinematic, spectral atmospheres, often prioritizing concept, mood, and texture over conventional riff‑verse‑chorus writing. Lyrically and thematically, it favors philosophical, surreal, or esoteric subjects, expanding beyond genre tropes into modernist poetry, absurdism, and metaphysical inquiry.
Chaotic Black Metal
Chaotic black metal is an extreme, dissonance-forward branch of black metal defined by turbulent song forms, dense guitar clusters, and blast-beat intensity taken to labyrinthine, almost vertiginous extremes. Where classic second‑wave black metal prioritized tremolo riffs and icy atmosphere, chaotic black metal intensifies the language through atonal chords (seconds, tritones, clustered intervals), sudden metric swerves, overlapping polyrhythms, and walls of noise-like texture. Vocals are typically rasped or shrieked and submerged in reverb, while drum parts veer from strafing blasts to fractured, off-kilter accents. The result is claustrophobic, hyper-detailed music that feels both ritualistic and abstract, often paired with esoteric, metaphysical, or apocalyptic themes. Production tends toward deliberately abrasive, mid‑forward mixes that preserve granular guitar detail and cymbal wash, creating an immersive, disorienting soundfield rather than conventional clarity.
Has influenced
Post-Black Metal
Post-black metal is a modern evolution of black metal that blends its tremolo-picked guitars, blast beats, and harsh vocals with the cinematic crescendos and textural depth of post-rock and shoegaze. Often brighter and more melodic than traditional black metal, it favors expansive song structures, reverb-drenched guitar layers, and a mix of screamed and ethereal clean vocals. Harmony tends toward consonant, suspended, and add9/maj7 voicings, creating a bittersweet, nostalgic atmosphere rather than pure abrasion. The style overlaps with, and is sometimes called, blackgaze; however, “post-black metal” is the broader umbrella, encompassing influences from post-rock, indie rock, ambient, and post-metal alongside shoegaze.
Blackgaze
Blackgaze is a fusion of black metal’s intensity (tremolo‑picked guitars, blast beats, harsh shrieks) with shoegaze’s lush, immersive textures and dreamy melodicism. It typically layers high‑gain, reverb‑drenched guitars into a luminous wall of sound, favoring suspended or added‑tone chords that blur tonality and create a sense of vastness. Songs often unfold in long arcs with dramatic dynamic shifts—from pummeling crescendos to breathy, ambient passages—and may juxtapose screamed vocals with soft, clean singing. While the mood can be bleak or melancholic, many blackgaze works balance darkness with radiant, almost euphoric uplift, aided by expansive production and post‑rock pacing.
Progressive Black Metal
Progressive black metal is a style of black metal that retains the genre’s core extremity—tremolo-picked riffing, harsh vocals, blast beats, and bleak atmospheres—while integrating progressive music traits. It commonly features longer song structures, frequent tempo and meter changes, expanded harmonic vocabulary, and a wider palette of textures (clean guitars, keyboards, jazz-influenced chords, or post-rock dynamics). Compared with orthodox black metal, it often prioritizes compositional development and narrative flow over strict minimalism, while still aiming for a cold, dramatic, or transcendent emotional impact.

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