The 6 Best Black Metal Concept Albums

Here are the six best concept albums in black metal!

The black metal movement boasts a wealth of uncompromising artists and impressive intellectuals, such as Vemod’s scholarly Jan Even Åsli. Accordingly, the genre has spawned some of the most intriguing concept albums.

Before diving into our main list, we must emphatically recommend Nargaroth’s Jahreszeiten (2009). In the album notes, Nargaroth’s mastermind, Ash, explained this transcendent triumph as “an attempt to reflect, musically and in the lyrics, the characteristics of the four seasons as well as the sensations of the (‘mental illness’) love in a classical notion and its changes.”

Similarly, Djevel’s trilogy dedicated to the night encompasses what have rightly been referred to as among the art form’s finest offerings: Tanker Som Rir Natten (2021), the awarded Naa Skrider Natten Sort (2022) and Natt Til Ende (2024).

Ulver’s Themes from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1998), the premise of which is revealed by the title, remains one of the most criminally fun yet cerebral musical experiments. We argue that this genre-defying gem is very black metal in spirit.

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Although Mayhem’s groundbreaking De Mysteriis Dom. Sathanas (1994) isn’t a concept record in the strict sense, the morbid fascinations expressed by the band’s already by then late frontman, the seer-like Pelle “Dead” Ohlin, eternally haunt us. Attila Csihar’s interpretations of Pelle’s lyrics, as edited by Thorns’ Snorre Ruch, famously blew listeners away.

Of course, De Mysteriis couldn’t have materialized into something more iconic, but Pelle had rather interesting plans regarding how to amplify the feeling of conceptual unity. For example, he asked his pen pal The Old Nick about the possibility of recording the intro to the title track in St. Peter's Basilica with a chorus.