Twin brothers, Shawn and Sam, aren't your typical kids—sure, their dark moodiness and deep dedication to metal isn't that unusual but their mysterious parentage sure is! Empowered by the legendary sword of Atoll, these kids are determined to thrash and wail on however many demons they have to in order to fulfill the ancient prophecy and regain their rightful position as Hell Baron of the Pit. Loud, fast and heavy like the music it is inspired by, BLACK METAL ties into the youth culture that has grown up around this ferocious sound. Then infused with a shot of ancient myth and a healthy dose of high adventure, it rises to the level of a truly epic tale.

Black metal is a paradox. A noisy underground metal genre brimming with violence and virulence, it has captured the world’s imagination for its harsh yet flamboyant style and infamous history involving arson, blasphemy, and murder. Today black metal is nothing less than a cultural battleground between those who claim it for nationalist and racist ends, and those who say: Nazi black metal fvck off! Black Metal Rainbows is a radical collection of writers, artists, activists, and visionaries, including Drew Daniel, Kim Kelly, Laina Dawes, Espi Kvlt, Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, Svein Egil Hatlevik, Eugene S. Robinson, Margaret Killjoy, and many more. Across essays and theory-fictions, artworks and comics, we say out loud: Long live black metal’s trve rainbow! This unique volume envisions black metal as always already open, inclusive, and unlimited: a musical genre whose vital spirit of total antagonism rebels against the forces of political conservatism. Beyond its clichés of grimness, nihilism, reaction, and signature black/white corpse-paint sneer, black metal today is a vibrant and revolutionary paradigm. This book reveals its ludic, carnival worlds animated by spirits of joy and celebration, community and care, queerness and camp, LGBTQI+ identities and antifascist, antiracist, and left-wing politics, not to mention endless aesthetic experimentation and fabulousness. From the crypt to the cloud, Black Metal Rainbows unearths black metal’s sparkling core and illuminates its prismatic spectrum: deep within the black, far beyond grimness, and over a darkly glittering rainbow!

Twenty-something guitarist Aksel stutters when he sings, and the latest reviews say he has the voice of a crow with throat plague. That’s not a compliment, even for the avant-garde music his band Perkeros plays. Aksel is having a hard time keeping the band together, stopping his girlfriend from kicking him out, and not getting eaten by his drummer (who happens to be a cranky brown bear). There are also the rival bands that Perkeros find themselves in battle with to save the city from supernatural forces set loose by ancient music. The key to it all could be in the music Aksel hears in his dreams—if it doesn’t drive him mad first. With a visual soundtrack that blasts off the page, Sing No Evil is a wild ride through otherworldly dangers and the power of pure rock’n’roll.

Here is the most comprehensive history yet of this fascinating offshoot of extreme heavy metal.

It’s the drag race from hell in this one-shot tie-in to Dark Nights: Death Metal! Taking place after the events of Dark Nights: Death Metal #3, the Darkest Knight is after Wally West and his Dr. Manhattan powers. Thankfully, Wally has backup in the form of Barry Allen, Jay Garrick, and Wallace West! It’s a knockdown, drag-out race through the Wastelands as the Flash Family tries to stay steps ahead of the Darkest Knight and his Lightning Knights!

In the early 1990s, Swedish death metal revolutionized the international music scene. Suddenly, the mild-mannered Scandinavian country found itself at the forefront of a new movement with worldwide impact thanks to bands such as Entombed, Dismember, and At the Gates. The birth of black metal drove the culture to even greater extremes, featuring a rawer, darker sound and non-ironic death-worship. Soon churches in both Norway and Sweden were aflame, and be- fore long Satanism emerged as more than just an image. But how did it all start? Why did Sweden become a hotbed for such aggressive, nihilistic music? And who are the people and bands that brought it all about? Blood, Fire, Death: A Swedish Metal Story recounts the evolution of the genre from the massive amplifier walls of 1970s rock, through the church-burning Satanic 1990s, to the diverse and paradoxical manifestations of the scene today. This book focuses on the phenomena that have propelled the scene forward in an evolution that has not only been musical, but aesthetic and ideological as well. This is a story about grotesque logos and icons that invoke death and darkness, but also a story of dedication, friendship, community, and a profound love for music.