deriving from the defintions of spiritual blackness and heavy metal music, black metal is evil, anti-Light, lyrics sang and/or shouted over neo-classical nordic and islandic music played by a band of musicians that contains guitars, bass, drums, keyboards/synthesizers, and many other various orchestra instruments. it's origin is unknown. also referred to as viking metal or ice metal.

(Adjective)
A word used by some in the heavy metal culture to describe something that falls into the following categories:

-Dark
-Demonic
-Satanic
-Epic
-Dark classical music

Brandon Forde

various different types, using blast beats (32beats instead on 16beats), and all that is immensly epic.
can be closely related to the burning of churches, becasue most of the followers of black metal are against religion.
founded by such epic bands as: venom, dimmu borgir, immortal and all that jazz.
i believe corpse paint is usually worn.

a kind of heavey metal with hipitch screeming and low pitch deep screaming of compleaty un-underestadable satanc lyrics like cradle of filth-dimmu borigr-rotting christ-christian death-acheron-leviathan

Symphonic Black Metal is essentially the Black Metal equivalent of Melodic Death Metal, only (as the name states) is more related to a symphony.

Symphonic Black Metal uses Guitar, Bass, Drums, Keyboards, and on occasions Symphony instruments such as Violins, Cellos, etc.

A genre specific to bands that hail from Norway and play Black Metal. It is one of the most famous genres in the Metal subculture, mostly due to the crimes, multiple church arsons, murders, and violence that surrounds it.

Norwegian Black Metal bands include (but are not limited to)
Darkthrone, Mayhem, Immortal, Emperor, Gorgoroth, Burzum, and Enslaved.