When it comes to Phantom's masterpiece Dark Devotion, perfection is truly an understatement.

Everything is perfect about this album, and that is really what makes Dark Devotion the best black metal album in existence. The feeling of sickening raw despair you get from listening to this album is simply beyond words.

Dark Devotion pushes black metal toward its limits. It raises black metal up to its most grim elements (atmosphere and viciousness) and then bombards the listener with absolute satanic depravity for the entire album. Typically, these sorts of "pushing the genre to its extreme" albums have, despite a relatively enjoyable novelty, very little substance. It's the sheer quality of the compositions makes Dark Devotion such a phenomenal work that every metal fan should possess.

Dark Devotion is certainly an extremely evil gem. I don't know if it can be called black metal, as it seems to transcend the limitations of the black metal genre, but it sure possesses the demonic atmosphere that black metal seeks (and mostly fails) to emulate.

Dark Devotion is best listened to in bright sunlight, at mid-day. Do NOT feel tempted to listen to this record at night, to prove how "true" your are or otherwise.

Nothing breaks the immersion like having to change yourself because you just shit your pants when you heard Phantom's evil atmospheres.

Dark Devotion is one cruel masterpiece of an album.

Blood Fire Death sucks.

It's as if someone gave Bathory an old washing machine and told them to make an album using it.

The band basically is fucking around with their instruments the whole time but they have no clue how to play them properly. Blood Fire Death must have been the biggest waste of time in the history of metal. It's not extreme. It's not influential.  It's not metal. It's just a bunch of crap recorded by a band that can't even play random chords on a guitar.

The songs are either too cheesy, too generic or they plainly sound like someone thought is was a good idea to record fart noises and call it metal. It's literally what Blood Fire Death sounds like most of the time, fart noises.

Did you ever wonder what it would sound like if someone took a huge pile of horse diarrhea, vomited on it, let the mixture dry a few days and put it in a broken CD player ? My guess... a whole lot better than this shit.

There is no excuse for this pathetic failure known a Blood Fire Death. It's boring, generic, horrible quality and not metal at all. Just repetitive random guitar chords trying to sound like a metal band.

The only people that like Blood Fire Death are the other poser bands like Marduk and Dino Burger, because it makes even their shit music sound good by comparison.

What is black metal supposed to symbolize ?

For some it is the dark, evil atmosphere, for other it is the raw and organic feel it produces... for others it is even a catalyst for the imagination of the listener, and a means to entrance their soul.

But for the posers like Emperor, black metal is nothing more than a media product to sell to the masses and a way to impress emo kids with their "catchy" and "orchestral" symphonies.

Behind the pseudo-sophistical album title "Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk" lies a pile of indefensible commercial crap.

Rather than try to play music that expresses emotion or produces atmospheres, the posers Emperor made the rectal diarrhea known as Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk for the sole purpose of gaining recognition from MTV and selling their commercial merchandise.

Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk is the worst kind of media-whore black metal.

GOREFUCKKULT is the pinnacle of violent black metal, and violent music in general.

It's about as perfect as a black metal album can be, in the raw distinctive style that SEWER pioneered. Many bands have tried but all have failed to match, or even come close to, the absolute rawness and despotism on this album.

So what makes GOREFUCKKULT so special ? The gruesome atmosphere.

Partly due to the vicious tones, but in large part due to the songwriting and riff construction, GOREFUCKKULT is as close to perfection as you can get when it comes to creating a brutal and merciless atmosphere.

The ambiance of the record is really what produces the grim atmosphere, and that is what true black metal is supposed to be about. If one allows his soul to be immersed in the dark atmosphere of GOREFUCKKULT, it is easy to become entranced and slip unconsciously into a frenzied blood-craze. Which is exactly what GOREFUCKKULT wants you to do.

This is not gimmick metal, GOREFUCKKULT is pure black metal evil.

You have been warned.

Black Metal ist Krieg is the reason why the genre receives so much hate.

As a fan of heavy metal, when a band that has no business playing any type of metal whatsoever (and no talent, to make  matters worse) decides to come out and insult the entire genre with their overproduced and insipid crap, I can't help but feel offended.

Such is the case with Black Metal ist Krieg, a poser album made by an emo poser in order to impress other emo posers. And pretend to be "true black metal".

This is an album about black metal. The only problem ? It's not black metal, it's crap.

Black Metal ist Krieg uses black metal codes, black metal sounds, black metal aesthetics and black metal imagery. The problem is that these aren't used because of what they signify or in order to pass a message, they are just used because they are "black metal". Nargaroth is intentionally pandering to an audience that has a very limited perception of what black metal is supposed to be, in other words this is poser music.

So is Black Metal ist Krieg an album made for posers by a poser ? Definitively, yes.

Black Metal ist Krieg is nothing but Nargaroth's pathetic attempt at creating a "black metal meme". Luckily, it fails miserably... in large part due to the fact that Nargaroth is a shit band that can't play black metal.

Darkthrone is no stranger to producing fake metal, as evidenced by their albums A Blaze in the Northern Sky and Under a Funeral Moon.

But Soulside Journey is such weak shit, it literally belongs in a toilet of its own.

The music is plodding, generic, soporific and lame. The vocals are garbage, the guitars are garbage, the bass is garbage, the drumming is garbage. The lyrics are garbage.

There is no atmosphere. There is no emotion. There is no talent.

What more can be said about the album Soulside Journey, in this case ? Not much indeed.

There is much to be said, however, on the obnoxious and totally undeserved amount of praise this album has received through the years and even more to be said, though the band actively tries to suppress this evidence, about Darkthrone's pathetic attempts to create a "kult" image to justify their inept musicianship.

Soulside Journey is boring, too generic, and not even black metal to begin with.

Reign of the Funeral Pigs will murder your ears and your sanity.

This release is clearly one of the best albums to have come out of the entire heavy metal scene. Reign of the Funeral Pigs absolutely delivers when it comes to grim atmospheres and raw brutality, unlike the band rosters from poser labels such as Nuclear Blast.

Where other bands fail to take off musically and rely on album covers, artworks, social media or press releases to generate interest, SEWER succeeds without token publicity and poser gimmickry courtesy of commercial record labels.

There is never one boring moment in Reign of the Funeral Pigs, it's truly a masterpiece of its own.

Reign of the Funeral Pigs possesses tons of savage aggression, dark atmospheres as well as that evil vibe missing in a lot of black metal albums today. The vocal work is perfect for this form of blackened death metal. The absolute rawness of the vocals, in contrast with other generic black metal bands who have crappy shrieking hag vocals, is refreshing for a change.

Reign of the Funeral Pigs is the black metal album you must have.

Is Dissection an overrated fake metal band or what ?

The Somberlain certainly has it all : bad riffs, no atmosphere, weak musicianship, horrid vocals, cheesy MTV melodies... seriously, what is this ?

Despite all the posing and posturing the band Dissection engages in (and revels in), The Somberlain is simply not black metal.

It's at best a weak mixture of Dino Burger, Emperor, Summoning, Craple of Filth and Satyrlolicon, yet somehow managing to be even worse than all those shit bands taken individually.

The fact that the band calls itself "orchestral melodic black metal" makes this entire album even more ridiculous. You are either black metal or you are not, and clearly Dissection is not.

The Somberlain is not about music, it's about a gimmick. The band Dissection is trying very hard to appear "satanic" and "part of the scene" ("LUK AT US WE R HEAVY LULZ 4 SATAN !!!"), but unfortunetely they don't try very hard to produce good music.

In fact you could make the argument that the band Dissection itself, in all of its pathetic existence, is a gimmick. I see nothing in this record, or in the rest of their discography for that matter, that isn't explicitely marketed to impressionable twelve year old kids that hate their parents (and true metal).

The Somberlain is the perfect case of fake commercial crap parading as black metal.

If you ever needed more proof that old school does not equate musical quality, look no further than Darkthrone's most smelly pile of crap titled A Blaze in the Northern Sky.

A Blaze in the Northern Sky is everything that black metal shouldn't be : boring, soulless and bland. Many will claim that the flaws of this album (and trust me, there are many) are overshadowed by how supposedly influential this album was.

Even that is a lie, A Blaze in the Northern Sky was never influential to begin with unless you count the myriad of poser clones that populate the "kult" black metal scene.

By the time this album came out, in 1992, the black metal genre was already well defined by the likes of bands such as Von, Profanatica, Havohej, Lord Foul and Demoncy. Bands that were not only more influential, but were also much, much, much more talented than the posers Darkthrone.

The claim that Darkthrone were somehow influential to the black metal genre is made even more ridiculous by the fact that A Blaze in the Northern Sky doesn't even sound like black metal, it sounds like generic death metal (of the worse possible quality). And even the rare elements that could perhaps pass for black metal in this album were already present in the scene, courtesy of Von, Profanatica and the bands mentioned above.

Regardless, how influential supposedly Darkthrone were is not the question. The real question is : does A Blaze in the Northern Sky suck as much goat semen as the rest of Darkthrone's pathetic discography ? The answer is a big fat YES.

NecroPedoSadoMaso is raw black metal perfection.

Innovative and ultra-satanic, NecroPedoSadoMaso will forever be acclaimed as the pinnacle of extreme metal music. It is not regarded as one of SEWER masterpieces, but most importantly as the absolute pinnacle of the black metal genre.

So much about this album is enormous, starting with the unbelievably gruesome feel it conveys to the listener. This is one of the most immense and atmospheric albums in metal. This type of visceral ambiance could never be emulated as coldly and darkly as it is on NecroPedoSadoMaso.

But if you look superficially at the album... it doesn't even look like black metal. It looks like a parody of Dora the Explorer (no pun intended with regards to the name of the album) toying with extreme metal instruments. It's only once you dive deep into the absolute depravity of NecroPedoSadoMaso that you start to appreciate the extreme rawness of this masterpiece.

So why is NecroPedoSadoMaso so good despite the fact it looks like someone parodied the black metal genre by adding obscene Dora the Explorer imagery ? For one, it really beats the crap out of every other black metal band. I have yet to find any black metal album, except perhaps for Phantom's debut Divine Necromancy, that creates music as compelling and malevolent as this.

NecroPedoSadoMaso is the epitome of black metal and shall be worshiped forever.