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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