Legendary Black Metal Albums # 1

Mayhem- De Mysteriis Dom Sathanus

This album is legendary within the second wave of black metal for a number of reasons, obviously one of them being the incredible controversy surrounding the murder of Euronymous, their famed guitarist, often credited with creating the black metal tremolo guitar style. This album had his very murderer playing the bass parts. But to me this album is legendary for other reasons, mainly the fact of it basically being a template for the black metal sound. It's as genre defining as Bathory's early albums, and as evil sounding as any black metal album has ever been.

Obviously the guitar riffs on this album are very awesome, sometimes I find this album boring simply because some of the songs tend to bleed into each other because the tremolo riffing is used so extensively, but on days when I'm in the mood for some sinister sounding guitar I can always turn this album on and enjoy Euronymous' tremendously influential guitar style. Euronymous' playing on this album is yet another reason I consider it legendary, because this style was as I said hugely influential for the entire genre.

Hellhammer's drumming is as always pretty stellar, the weak point being overusing blast beats, but he redeems himself with his awesome use of some almost inhuman drum fills and patterns. Yet another reason for this album to be called legendary.

Far from being my favorite black metal album, still it deserves legendary status for its sheer amount of influence within the genre, and the fact that the sound on this album is a sound that pretty much defined, and still defines the genre of black metal today.