Tonight's Top Stop: Dark Funeral

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ON THE PHONE from Sweden, Micke Svanberg didn't sound like the Satan-worshipping guitarist Lord Ahriman of the black-metal band Dark Funeral. The 34-year-old sounded like a well-adjusted father of two who happens to go onstage sporting corpse paint and spiked-leather outfits while fronting a highly theatrical, primal heavy metal band.

"I can understand that there are a lot of people who are afraid of what Dark Funeral stands for and how we present ourselves onstage," Svanberg said, the faint sounds of a guitar solo racing in the background. "But I'm pretty sure if people would meet us, they would get another picture.

"Strictly religious people claim every black-metal band is sacrificing babies and drinking blood for breakfast and all this kind of crazy Hollywood [stuff]," he said. "But it's just in their own books, it's their own fairy tales that they're scared of. If you take organized religions, I think they scare more people than a band in the black-metal scene, with all their threats and abuse of power."

Dark Funeral's last CD, 2005's "Attera Totus Sanctus," continues the group's assault on organized religion, and the music is as fast and buzzing as ever. It sounds like Beelzebub fronting a chorus of chain saws and jackhammers.

The group kicks off its monthlong North American tour at Jaxx tonight, co-headlining with Norwegian black-metal legends Enslaved. It's a perfect circle: Dark Funeral's first show was opening for Enslaved in 1994, and Svanberg said, "It was either us or Enslaved who were the first Scandinavian black-metal band to play the United States."

While black metal is strictly an underground sensation in the U.S., in Nordic countries, Svanberg said, its just part of the music pantheon. "Lots of middle-age, normal, family fathers in gray suits come to the show."

» Jaxx, 355 Rolling Road, Springfield; with Enslaved, Abigail Williams, Inverted Trifixion and the Green Evening Requiem, 6:30 p.m., $30; 703-569-5940.

Photo courtesy Dark Funeral