"...Black Metal opens with a literal assault on the listener. There isn’t even a run-in groove on the original vinyl album – the first sound you hear is a horrible noise the second the needle hits the groove (if you’re listening to the original vinyl it does this anyhow). It seemed that punk nihilism, the heavy industry of the area, a real desire to shock the listener out of complacency and a vicious sense of mischief were coming together in a screeching sonic scree.

 “That is literally a chainsaw cutting into metal,” says Cronos. “Abaddon used to work in a steel factory. I was saying to him, ‘We really need to find this annoying sound to go at the start of the album.’ And he said, ‘Fucking hell, if you’ve ever heard metal grinding on metal, it’s a sound that will go right through you.’ We took huge chunks of steel into the studio, put them into a vice and away we went. It was a fucking incredible sound, menacing.”

- Louder