Continuing to punish myself with extra writing during Album of the Year season, welcome back to my annual retrospective on black metal albums celebrating their 30th anniversary this year! While not quite as jam-packed as 1994, there were still plenty of all-time greats released in ’95, and this time I will be opting to cover most of the big ones you can probably think of off the top of your head (Darkthrone didn’t make the cut once again, sorry Chris!). Black metal was no stranger to experimentation early on, but this year saw the furthering of unique sounds that carry clear throughlines to some of the most highly-regarded bands of today.

Last year I decided to split this into three parts, and will be doing that once again for the sake of article length. For a genre that already has too many characters dedicated to it by the standards of certain heavy music fans, who really wants to read a single 3,500 word monstrosity about it? Once again Norwegian bands take center stage at five out of nine entries (and the entirety of this first part alone) but a few other European countries will also be featured, including one for the very first time. And in another first for this series I was able to nail down at least the month that each album was released in 1995, rather than having to guess based on any recording info I could scrounge up… so I can affirmatively say it will be a chronological journey this time around! Let’s take a look at the black legends 1995 had to offer.