Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. It often uses fast tempos, shrieked vocals, highly distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, blast beat drumming, raw recording, and unconventional song structure. During the 1980s, a few thrash metal bands formed a prototype for black metal. This so-called "first wave" included bands such as Venom, Bathory, Hellhammer, Celtic Frost and Sarc?fago. A "second wave" arose in the early 1990s, spearheaded by Norwegian bands such as Mayhem, Burzum, Darkthrone, Immortal and Emperor. This scene developed the black metal style into a distinct genre. Black metal has been met with hostility from mainstream culture, mainly due to the misanthropic and anti-Christian standpoint of many artists. Moreover, a few of the genre's pioneers have been linked with church burnings, murder or National Socialism. For these, and other reasons, black metal is often seen as an underground form of music.

Black metal guitarists usually favor high-pitched guitar tones and a great deal of distortion. Typically, the guitar is played with much use of fast tremolo picking. When writing music, guitarists often use scales, intervals and chord progressions that yield the most dissonant and ominous sounds. Guitar solos and low guitar tunings are rare in black metal. The bass guitar is rarely used to perform stand-alone melodies. It is not uncommon for the bass guitar to be inaudible or to homophonically follow the bass lines of the electric guitar. Typically, drumming is fast-paced and uses double-bass and/or blast beat techniques. Black metal songs often stray from conventional song structure and often lack clear verse-chorus sections. Instead, many black metal songs contain lengthy and repetitive instrumental sections.

Traditional black metal vocals take the form of high-pitched shrieks, screams and snarls. This is in stark contrast to the low-pitched growls of death metal. The most common and founding lyrical theme is opposition to Christianity and other organized religions (called "Right-Hand Path" religions by some). As part of this, many artists write lyrics that could be seen to promote atheism, antitheism, paganism and Satanism. The hostility of many secular or pagan black metal artists is in some way linked to the Christianization of their countries. Other oft-explored themes are depression, nihilism, misanthropy,[5] death and other dark matters. However, over time, many black metal artists have begun to focus more on topics like the seasons (particularly winter), nature, mythology, folklore, philosophy and fantasy.