wat?

But Link! I'm sure we can still work things out...
Don't give up on us so fast

I thought I was the only one.

I came back to tell you that you suck, Phinehas. Unfortunately, someone else beat me to the necromancy. I must be getting old.

Nice facelift!

Thumbs up from here. 

Good luck with your exams!
I passed a math exam at my uni today, so I'm in a cheerfull mood.

You can't define a genre by production values.  Because most black metal is underground, it tends to be recorded cheeply.  But being recorded cheeply does not make a band black metal!

And black metal is NOT simple.  Not in the slightest.  And it's much more refined than noisey genres like noisepunk or screamo.

Strictly musically speaking, most black metal is of a very simple formula, and this isn't meant in any derogatory way, I should have worded it differently in the previous reply.
The new Emperor, Dimmu Borgir, and Cradle of Filth is not black metal. It might be somewhat extreme, but it just isn't black.
 Black has a special sound to it that is somewhat hard to define. It doesn't come from poor production, no. But the primeval, dark and brutal sound of true black metal is "simple", in a natural way. Bands like Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth have certain symphonic elements to their music that is pretty far from black metal and some parts are rather complex. Other black metal bands of old, like Darkthrone, Satyricon (to some extent), Carpathian Forest, are in contrast to the above mentioned symphonic extreme bands, drifting towards "punk", which is a pretty much non complex genre too, and away from metal as a whole. A sad development really, but I guess the brutally satanic, malechauvenist, axelopping vikings are a thing of the past :p

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Cradle of Filth is black metal, they just aren't very good.  Black Metal is flashy and melodic.  Compare Emperor to Meshuggah....

No it isn't.

Black metal is "simple", noisy, gritty and most of them tend to focus on live performances (some don't perform live though). The "true" stuff, as us metal heads like to call it, is often underground and often has bad production. Most black metal of old started out that way, most new true black metal does too. The bad production is  part of the reason why it is defined as "simple", noisy and gritty. For a perfect example of this, try finding some of the free media the band called Svartpest has lying around.

I don't see a reason in comparing symphonic extreme metal to technical post thrash though... The old Emperor was black metal, it followed the above "formula", the "new" stuff isn't. Far from it, in my oppinion.

I mostly like Punk (Anti-flag  ), metal (System of A down  you gotta love them  ) Hardrock (Metallica , and a bit Motörhead), sometimes Creative mixtures of music styles (ofcourse with rock:P) like "Rage against the machine", "Muse" and "Rammstein" and lost and lost more, as long as it has a gituar drums and vocals in it , mostly already named here. But the most heaviest things I listen to (and still like )  are:
"Chimaria" and "Bullet for my valentine" and "Cradle of Filth"
But I don't know if that's metal, heavy metal, death metal or black metal is I don't give a bleep as long as it's rocking 
Péace out!
^^

Actually, if you want to get technical, none of it is metal. Apart from perhaps Cradle of Filth, and some Metallica (even though I hate the band), but I wouldn't argue for or against them being metal either way.