Whether through a desire for musical simplicity, or paying homage to their inspiration, many black metal bands kept the spirit and riff construction of hardcore punk alive - although in songs that were distinctively "metal" in structure. These bands follow the general divisions of hardcore into a rhythmic essence and a melodic one, represented on opposite poles roughly by the UK bands the Exploited and Discharge, respectively. By putting these punk riffs into metal songs, and keeping the metal atmosphere, black metal bands of this type made a clear transition between outsider music of the past and present. Like the original hardcore, these bands tend to have more explicit ideologies (though they do not share the same ideology) and express themselves through absurdism and raw emotion. Since black metal is generally played faster than hardcore punk, these bands frequently expand song structure with intermediate riffs and interludes. Although they are aesthetically similar to punk bands, there is enough difference that to confuse them would be to slight both genres; the black metal bands are less focused on the individual, and more, in a method central to metal for three generations, on the big picture, as that is where the "heavy" in "heavy metal" originates.

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