What exactly is the difference between black metal and death metal?

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[ExNoctemNacimur]

To me, it all sounds the same.  Help?

[Lord John]

I always thought it was the vocal style.  Black metal has high pitched shrieking and Death Metal has deep growling.  

On a musical level Death Metal is far more chromatic including tri-tones and flattened seconds to produce heavy riffs whereas Black Metal use a lot of diminished chords and tremolo picking arpeggios.  Just play non-stop minor chords and arpeggiate every note of the triad and you've got black metal.   Oh, and don't forget an unhealthy dose of reverb to make everything wash over so all the tremelos blend into a blob of unrecognisable sound.  

Death Metal on the other hand goes for a really gutteral sound with down-tuned guitars and crunchy riffs as opposed to the high pitched black metal guitar sound.

And I guess lyrically, Black metal sing about Satan, forests and more forests.  In fact most of their videos are made with them standing in hammy make-up amongst some pine trees shot with a VHS recorder!

And always remember, if it sounds like it was recorded in someone's  garage with an iPhone, you know you're listening to "true" black metal or "brutal" death metal.  At that point musicianship goes out the door...  But maybe this is my bias talking now.  Don't get me wrong, I love black metal (I'm not well enough acquainted with death metal) but the amount of crap out there is overwhelming.  It's good for a laugh though.

Hope I helped in some way!

[Esoteric]

I haven't got any sleep at all so I'll probably explain this pretty badly. You can do so many things with both genres but for me black metal is defined by tremolo picking and atmosphere as opposed to the meat and potatoes approach of death metal

For example take a band like Ulver
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2Qrz1dH6jc

and now lets take a band like Entombed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia4EH5xIBe0

Both bands are amazing, but they both sound fundamentally different

[Menternor]

I will not explain anything. Instead, I'll just tell you to look to the menu to your left and click on Metal Genres.

[Claus]

I will not explain anything. Instead, I'll just tell you to look to the menu to your left and click on Metal Genres.

  I was going to say the exact same thing!

[ExNoctemNacimur]

Righto.  Woops.  As you can see i am a bit of a noob to this site
Would primoridal be considered black metal?  Or am I missing the point of the thingy?

[ExNoctemNacimur]

So ulver is black metal and entombed are death metal?

[Joseph Allen]

Righto.  Woops.  As you can see i am a bit of a noob to this site
Would primoridal be considered black metal?  Or am I missing the point of the thingy?

Early Primordial, pretty much. Their later stuff is a lot more folk than black though, at this point their only real resemblance is if Nemetheanga does some rough vocals for emphasis on some lyrics.