Black Metal Plague: 1349

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EXTREME METAL BANDS always have extreme names. (See Goatwhore, below.) 1349 sounds like a relatively tame name — until you learn that 1349 was the year the Black Plague came to Norway and wiped out two-thirds of the population.

The decade-old Norwegian band makes blazingly fast and primal black metal, and its latest CD, "Hellfire," sounds like a punch in the face. Vocalist Ravn begins the album roaring, "I am abomination!" and then it's all blinding riffs and rhythms from guitarist Archaon, bassist Seidemann and legendary black-metal drummer Frost.

While black metal is often brutal, and the genre has had its own share of controversy (murders, church burnings), the music's favorite lyrical themes — pure evil, death, Satan — usually aren't meant literally; they are often metaphorical meditations on free will.

"The reason why I chose black metal is that it doesn't have any limitations," said Ravn, who seems to be as philosophical offstage as he is intimidating on it, decked out in facial corpse paint and spiky armguards.

"I'm not a religious person," he said. That is perhaps stating the obvious, but what Ravn went on to explain is that he rejects supernatural deities such as God and the devil. "I don't see Satan as a demonic god, or pure evil, like the Christians [do]," he said. "Satan is just about rebellion of man, and that represents freedom — freedom of the mind that's not suppressed by written laws from ancient times.

"I'm not saying all these laws shouldn't be obeyed," Ravn continued. "But most of it has been polluted by people who were aiming for human control, and that's what I don't like about it. I want people to think for themselves and make up their own minds. I don't see why anybody would want to lay their hands into something that they don't know what it is. … It's a myth that's never made sense to me, and it still doesn't.

Then again, he laughed, "When I grow old, and death comes upon me, maybe I'll surrender."

» Jaxx, 6355 Rolling Rd., West Springfield; with Goatwhore, Nachtmystium, Averse Sefira, Terrorkult and Inverted Trifixion, Thurs., 6 p.m., $18; 703-569-5940.

Photos courtesy Candlelight Records