Experimental Black Metal

Experimental black metal is an umbrella for black metal recordings that subject the genre's core elements — tremolo-picked guitar, blast beats and rasped vocals — to methods drawn from industrial music, drone, noise, psychedelia and free improvisation. It is distinguished from the avant-garde black metal of the 1990s by a later, more international scope and by a willingness to dissolve song form altogether. French acts such as *Blut Aus Nord* and *Deathspell Omega* built dense, dissonant systems from the idiom in the 2000s, while American and Finnish bands including *Weakling*, *Krallice* and *Oranssi Pazuzu* pushed it toward minimalism, length and psychedelic fusion.