kvlt

White Tiger / Bandcamp

Black metal is a subgenre of heavy metal music that heavily features—even for metal standards—satanic, anti-Christian, or pagan content. The subgenre is known for fast tempos, experimentation, and musicians dressing up as corpses or demons.

Black metal emerged in the Norwegian heavy metal scene during the 1980s and developed a cult following. As more bands formed, black metal fans began using the term kvlt to refer to bands like Mayhem, Darkthrone, Gorgoroth that exemplified the satanic imagery of the genre.

Evidenced by 2000, the term kvlt is apparently an alternate spelling of cult meant to mimic older spellings and as a complimentary allusion to Nordic or pagan culture. (Most Scandinavian languages spell cult as kult.)

Mother of Satan / Bandcamp

Within the black metal community, kvlt is and has been a positive term. Over time, kvlt became almost a gatekeeping term used by black metal fans to “prove” their cred by using it to refer to only the most obscure or underground bands or recordings. Possibly due to this, kvlt became a word used to mock or provoke black metal fans by enthusiasts of other subgenres of metal music. This appears to have by the early 2000s, as by this time, kvlt was already being used both seriously and ironically by metal fans online.

In April 2019, a man was charged with burning three, historically Black churches in Louisiana. Authorities suspected his interest in black metal might have been a motive; the investigation may have put kvlt in the spotlight.