Psychedelic black metal…a concept over-conceptualized and under-realized, your correspondent’s band Unqualified Scum being case-and-point. Psychedelia simply can’t escape its bright demeanor, both in metaphoric Deadheaded optimism and literal ingestion (seriously, try to focus on darkness during a trip). Jarkko “Korjak” Salo leads his band to a darker plane, creating black metal dreamscapes that would overwhelm the dosed. The longest marches succeed where the average jam band fails, because the group has the entire thing planned. Whether its the elaborate moss formations of the Finnish forest or a Leslie speaker…the head spins.

Full of Hell pulls no branding punches, from the moniker to the album art — perhaps the best of the past decade — with fire exploding outward from a habit. Loud, abusive — the moments of “power electronics” served by Dylan Walker screech like a subway train handling a corner too quickly, any haphazardry forgiven, for he’s leaning out into the pit, preaching in tones both guttural and black while he turns the knob. A strange reference point might be the cult video game Katamari Damacy; the band has rolled through so many collaborative projects, accumulating a mass of ideas as they go and yet rolling ever more destructively because of it.

Fake it until you make it; bring in a synthesizer and figure out the orchestral stuff that way. That’s an understandable approach to the epic “power metal” scene, as few have the budget to pursue such escapades. Blind Guardian, however, moves like Michael Bay: no fake explosions, no fake orchestras. The Germans have always behaved like they were mad Roger Waters invited Wasp to perform at the Berlin Wall instead, staging every fantasy concept album on a scale the Pink Floyd maestro might admire. Such bombast allures even this most frosty black metal fan. Blind Guardian remains the top of its scene because it sees no sound is too big.

France, a fount for the arts, secular thought, and pessimistic philosophy, may have been destined to birth the world’s most contorted black metal acts. That Paracletus might not even be the best release from a trilogy released by such a band (spoiler alert) speaks to the depth of creativity swimming in the Seine, every bit as filthy as Henry Miller’s description. Deathspell Omega, for all the writhing that has occurred both across its development as a band and across this album (best understood as a single, lengthy composition), has remained steadfastly committed to the core wrath that serves as the only heat for second-wave black metal practitioners.

Numerous German bands have made an appearance on this list, which probably comes as a surprise to few. None enforce the most stereotypical reason why better than Valborg, that the hard-edged German language embodies an intensity that Latin-based languages, and even the Slavic ones, can’t compare with. It’d be too simple to compare the group’s mechanized rhythm section to Kraftwerk but frontman Jan Buckard spits on the idea of an emotionless Teuton. You can hear the vein throbbing out from his neck as he howls, and the angst flowing down to those in his wrists as well, struggling not to overexert upon the frets of his bass.