I'm still fairly uneducated with a lot of Black Metal, but I think my first dabble in it was hearing Cradle of Filth's "Her Ghost In The Fog" on Kerrang! TV. I realise that they weren't really Black Metal by that point, but that was really my first taste of anything remotely outside the mainstream. I got their "Lovecraft and Witchhearts" album and had a few favourites on there (despite not being much of a CoF fan anymore, "For Those Who Died" is still a cracking song).
Then I kind of stuck with the mainstream for a few more years. Found a few bands like GWAR and Manowar thanks to the internet, but not really any Black Metal (I'd heard about the church burnings and murders but never really thought to listen to any of it). Until I read Metal Hammer's review of Wacken 2006, anyway.
I remember I was sat in my work experience placement's staff room on my lunch break, when suddenly I was greeted by an image of a band (I forget who. I thought Emperor but it probably wasn't) performing onstage with a goat's head on a spike. I then went to my best mate Adam (who was - and still is - a bigger metalhead than me) and told him we had to go next year. So we did.
I'd heard the odd Immortal track before, but when we knew we were going to Wacken and they were headlining, I bought "Sons of Northern Darkness", "Damned in Black" and "At The Heart of Winter" - the former being probably my favourite Black Metal album and the latter being the most atmospheric metal music I had ever heard at that point.
Weirdly, Wacken that year didn't introduce me to any new Black Metal, but it did increase my interest in Power Metal. However over the next year (with plans to return for Wacken 2008) I looked up more bands (1349, Emperor, Belphegor to name a few). Seeing Gorgoroth (as they were named at the time) live at Wacken '08 was a pretty awesome experience, too.
I pretty much stuck with what I knew for a few years after that. Then Adam mentioned that one of his old uni mates had joined a Black Metal band called Winterfylleth and we checked them out at Bloodstock 2010 - I've been a fan of theirs since. Not long after that, a mate of mine from Peterborough formed a band called The Infernal Sea and their shows introduced me to a lot more underground extreme metal (their show in a pub in King's Lynn with Old Corpse Road and Aloeswood springs to mind).
Nowadays I really only listen to Immortal, Winterfylleth and The Infernal Sea, but given the chance I'd love to go see more live Black Metal. In my time at festivals I've seen a bunch of bands, but always seem to forget to really look them up afterwards. Then when I do, I'm not in the mood to listen to Black Metal. Weird.
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