The avant-garde wave broke away from Norwegian black metal almost as soon as the second wave was established. By 1997, a handful of bands had decided that tremolo riffs and blast beats were a starting point, not a destination.
What defines it
The recognisable musical hallmarks of black metal — tremolo picking, blast beat drumming, shrieked vocals, treble-heavy production — are still present but no longer central. What replaces them is unpredictable. Ulver added trip-hop and electronic textures on Themes from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1998) and never went back. Arcturus combined symphonic black metal with progressive rock and operatic male vocals on La Masquerade Infernale (1997). Japan’s Sigh worked classical, jazz and horror-soundtrack motifs into the same album. Solefald sang in three languages at once. Dødheimsgard built collages out of industrial noise and traditional black metal in the same song.
The 2000s and after
The avant-garde lineage is still active. England’s A Forest Of Stars build chamber-music structures and Victorian-era theatrical narratives into a recognisably black-metal frame. Bands across Europe and Asia continue to find new ways to graft outside influences onto the second-wave skeleton. The genre rewards patience. Few records sound like another. Start with La Masquerade Infernale (Arcturus) or Themes from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Ulver) and follow the threads outwards.