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[2025] Handle With Care! Recommended Depressive Black Metal Bands Summary

music writerKOH-1
Started working as a music writer as a side job while employed at a record shop, and have been contributing to music magazines and web media for over 15 years. Although Western music is my main field, I always strive to stay curious with the motto, “I like what I like.” I have experience playing in a band, where I was a bassist responsible for songwriting and composition. Instruments I’ve performed on include bass, guitar, and piano. I resumed piano lessons after turning 40 and have been continuing ever since!

In recent years—partly due to the influence of the film “Lords of Chaos”—it feels like more music fans have at least heard the term “black metal.” But are you familiar with the genre commonly known as “depressive black metal”?

This article introduces some of the most notable bands in depressive black metal—often abbreviated as DSBM overseas—a subgenre derived from black metal that is intensely introspective and decidedly world-weary.

Even among black metal fans, many find DSBM difficult to enjoy.

It’s a highly selective genre, so please approach it with due caution!

[2025] Handle With Care! A Roundup of Recommended Depressive Black Metal Bands (11–20)

The Funeral RainI Shalt Become

The Funeral Rain

The Funeral RainI Shalt Become

It’s really fascinating that black metal—like that of Zarach’ Baal’ Tharagh (The Zastar?) and Leviathan—was already being played in 1990s America and went on to influence later bands.

I Shalt Become, the solo black metal project by S.

Holliman based in Illinois, is also a crucial presence that began operating in the late ’90s US scene.

Their debut album, Wanderings, released in 1998, is so bleak, menacing, and unrelentingly gray—undoubtedly influenced by Burzum—that it feels like it eats away at the listener down to the deepest part of the soul.

With icily cold black-metal chord progressions and riffs, vocals that sound like screams or wails echoing from a dark basement, and songs that unfold at mid- to slow-tempos, it essentially presents a prototypical form of depressive black metal.

Lyrically, it deals more with abstract concepts than direct depictions of death, and from a modern perspective it could also be described as a type of atmospheric black metal.

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Woman of Dark DesiresBathory

Bathory – Woman of Dark Desires

Woman of Dark DesiresBathory

Bathory, the Swedish pioneers of extreme metal, formed in Stockholm in 1983.

Centered around frontman Quorthon, they explored a wide musical range from early black metal to Viking metal.

From their 1984 self-titled debut to the Viking metal landmark Hammerheart, they released numerous classic albums.

After 1985 they stopped performing live and continued solely as a studio band.

Their anti-Christian lyrics and raw sound had a profound impact on the later black metal scene.

While their extreme musical style and lyrical themes aren’t for everyone, they are essential listening for anyone who wants to understand the history of extreme metal.

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In conclusion

If you listened to even one of the tracks introduced this time, you probably realized just how singular the genre of depressive black metal is.

As mentioned at the beginning, DSBM possesses a darkness so profound that even fans of black metal may find it difficult to approach; it’s not something to listen to out of mere curiosity.

But once you become captivated by that darkness, there’s no turning back—you’ll be dragged into a deep mire.