Though Venom had named an album Black Metal two years earlier, the 1984 debut by Sweden’s Bathory is what really established the genre’s sound—no human had ever sung with the phlegmy, demonic screech that Quorthon does here. The band’s murky, zero-fidelity mixture of Motörhead’s momentum with Black Sabbath’s pagan pessimism adds up to a battering ram of depravity. The nefarious subject matter of tracks like “Storm of Damnation” and “Raise the Dead” just makes the creep show creepier.