Blut aus Nord Essentials

Black-metal bands have been exploring atmosphere ever since the music’s birth. But for Blut Aus Nord, it’s an obsession. Beginning in the ’90s as a solo project for French musician and occultist Vindsval, they filter black metal’s unearthly menace through echoing feedback and squall informed by industrial music. When Blut Aus Nord hit a stride with 2003’s The Work Which Transforms God, their style stood boldly outside black metal orthodoxy. In the years since, however, they’ve proven prophetic as the genre has produced a number of bands, including the blackgaze scene, whose music is dominated by atmosphere so thick it’s textural.