Christianity and heavy metal music could not be used in the same sentence back in the '70s and '80s, but now, with the influx of Christian music and the shift from "Rock and Roll is from the devil," more styles of music have been accepted by various denominations of the faith. However, that being said, there are people still out there scratching their heads about Christian Black Metal, or "Unblack Metal."

First, it's important to know what Black Metal is. Black Metal is just about as heavy and crazy as music can get. It is commonly associated with super fast tempos, blast beat drumming, crunchy overly distorted guitars, and high pitched screaming vocals. It formed out of a combo of Thrash and Death Metal, and common lyrical content has to do with anything from Satan, anti-Christianity messages, and even Neo-Nazi music.

Black Metal bands have been known to perform sacrifices and rituals to Satan on stage, douse each other and the crowd in blood, keep animal corpses and bones on stage, and hang inverted crosses along with defiling other religious images on stage. Some groups have even burned churches.

After reading all of this, you may ask yourself, "How could anything Christian come out of this?" The easy answer is, where there is a will, there is a way, and somehow Christian musicians came up with what they dubbed "Unblack Metal."

The musical style and intensity of Unblack Metal is the same as Black Metal. They swap out shrieks to Satan and switch them with shrieks to God. Often times Unblack metal attacks Satanism in their lyrics just as the Black Metal artists attack Christianity.

Various sources link to Australian band Horde as the first Christian Unblack Metal band with their debut album Hellig Usvart. According to No Life to Metal, the band began receiving death threats for professing Christianity while performing Black Metal.

Black Metal barely ever receives much mainstream attention, but a few Unblack bands have left the underground cult following, and played large Christian Festivals including Cornerstone.

The two different styles are in actuality no different from each other in terms of genre. They separate each other by the titles Black and Unblack because of their core beliefs and not because of anything played. Many Christian bands in the genre like to have at least that distinction so they are not grouped into Satanic music.

However, the band Veil of Remembrance seems to disagree and embraces the title.

"We believe that all kinds of music are now neutral. I mean, a music genre cannot be "evil" itself. It all depends on the purpose: why you're doing it and what the lyrics are about. I will use an illustration to explain: a knife in the hands of a murderer can kill life, but a knife in the hands of a doctor can save life. Now is the knife evil itself? No, it depends on how you use it. The power is in our hands to decide what we want to use music for. I know that many black metal fans react badly when we use the words "black metal" to describe our music, and we are sorry if we make people upset for that. But for us, black metal is a musical genre. Listen to Veil of Remembrance and tell me what kind of music it is," said the band according to Ultimate Metal.

Black Metal is known for its violence, darkness, and general tendency toward evil. Many Christians and even Black Metal artists themselves feel there can never be true Christian Black Metal because a Christian would have the light of Jesus and not the darkness and "evil" required to perform the music properly. Is this where the point lies? The Unblack Metal community has a chance to infiltrate the Black Metal scene with their music that features the exact opposite of what their counterparts are saying. Sometimes the message gets lost in translation, and for many, the translation comes in shrieking vocals and blast beats.

What do you think? To Black Metal or to Unblack Metal, can a Christian do it? Let us know in the comments.

To further investigate, check out some of these Unblack Metal bands: Frost Like Ashes, Horde, Sanctifica, and Crimson Moonlight.

Below is a documentary on Christian Black Metal:

Also, here is a video that inspired this topic: