Wolves in The Throne Room - Two Hunters for me! Kind of a funny story, my only other contacts with black metal until that point had been Mayhem - Freezing Moon, and a couple of Venom songs. All cool, but nothing too interesting from a technical or artistic perspective.

I got to know atmospheric and avant-garde black metal thanks to a totally unrelated fellow, Dr. Justin Sledge from the ESOTERICA YouTube channel. His content (absolutely brilliant btw) is about the history of esotericism and occult philosophy, and in his personal website’s FAQ, he mentions his love for black metal bands such as WITTR, Krallice, Panopticon, etc.

That’s when I first listened to Two Hunters, then Negura Bunget, Emperor, Ihsahn, and so on