Among those who created black metal, there were some who used intricate neoclassical compositions to accent the melancholy emotions and basic naturalism of black metal, crafting songs that seemed more at home in a Greco-Roman drama than a modern genre of popular music. This style was archly epic and staged its songs around massive dramas of natural beauty and human heroism, often taking on existential and Romantic topics in a form that would have been entirely compatible with English and German Romantic poetry of the preceding two centuries. Further, these bands often embraced medievalist attire and language, although not universally. Songs were longer than normal, and often worked together as concept albums; while percussion was more like that of standard black metal or death metal, it was deemphasized so to play more of an accentual role than a leading one. Although this style seemed to quickly exhaust its topics and fade away, this was in part because of its limited appeal to a broader fanbase, who found it difficult to chase down meaning in sprawling works of grandeur where three chords and a bass kick would do. However, its influence was widely felt in the ambient black metal genre, where the same feeling and intent was streamlined into a more sustainable form. While the techniques and aesthetic used by these bands is similar to black metal as a whole, this is consistent with the divergence of black metal from death metal by using melodic narrative composition instead of a mostly rhythmic version of the same. For the listener who can get past the sweeping waves of melody and complex rhythmic arrangements, the melodic blackmetal style remains an enduring reward in artistic and musical depth.

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