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The genesis of this exercise lies in the old version of a Swedish metal site called Global Domination. About six years ago, its domain name was statikmajik.com, and it had a recurring feature called "Name that fucken blastbeat". The site operators would play brief blastbeat passages from songs to drummers, who would comment on the passages and try to identify who played them. This was before the time of streaming audio, so it was a bit surreal to read about blastbeats one couldn't hear. Sadly, the sands of time have washed over "Name that fucken blastbeat"; not even the Internet Archive retains records of those columns.

So in my own small way, I am paying tribute to those columns with this exercise. Here are 10-second snippets of songs by black metal bands. They are all well-known: household names in the house of black metal.

How many can you identify? Leave your guesses in the comments below. (Only one set of guesses per person, please.) You get one point if you name the band, one point if you name the album, and two points if you name the song. You can guess up until midnight PST, Wednesday, June 8. The winner gets bragging rights, and also gets to pick a black metal album for me to review.

(To the winner of the previous contest, who picked a Christian technical metalcore album for me to review: I have not forgotten about you (although I wish I could). I will get around to writing about that abomination.)

Here's the catch: You cannot cheat . Now, I know honor is not a primary concern in the realm of stab-your-bandmates-in-the-back-and-also-unarmed-gay-men. But I want to keep this fun and fast. So you can use only the knowledge you have at this very moment . Do not consult any outside source - your friends, your music collection, your song-identifying smartphone app. Of course, with this honor system, I have no way of knowing if you cheat. Just know that if you cheat, I wish you an eternity in hell, where the only thing to listen to is Mortician albums at 128kbps. Trust me, you don't want that. So don't cheat, have fun, and leave your guesses below. I'll post the answers in a week.

— Cosmo Lee

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CAN YOU TELL THIS STUFF APART?

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