Heavy metal has pretty much always been considered music for and by white people; hence, its immense popularity in places like Northern Europe. But without the graveyard howling, axe shredding and feedback shrieking of decades of bluesmen and eventually Jimi Hendrix, metal never could have happened, and many a black musician has carried on the tradition over the years. In honor of the Black Rock Coalition celebrating its 30th anniversary throughout September — and as a sequel to last week’s BRC Playlist — here’s a primer on black men and women making metal, starting with progenitors like Hendrix and even Muddy Waters' 1968 psychedelic blues album Electric Mud. We also focus on current extreme metalcore-era bands with black singers, players or both, like God Forbid, Sevendust, Candiria, Straight Line Stitch and Sepultura (fronted by Cleveland-born Derrick Green since 1998).

Katon de Pena’s speed-metal group Hirax and Doug Pinnick’s art-metal King’s X have been around as long as the Black Rock Coalition itself. Preceding them was the all-black hardcore-crossover instigators behind Bad Brains -- who kicked things off in 1977! Ice-T's all-black rap metal Body Count have been around nearly as long as B.R.C. (since 1990). This isn’t just a stateside phenomenon: Skindred — fronted by Benji Webbe and informed by reggae like Bad Brains — come from Wales; Skunk Anansie and their screamer, Skin, are from London; the death metal outfit Blasphemy, whose black guitarist answers to “Caller of the Storms,” hail from Vancouver; Mystifier, featuring guitarist Beelzebubth (!!), from Brazil; all-black death metal band Crackdust from Botswana, of all places.

This playlist also takes in some of the more metal moments by classic bands like Funkadelic, Fishbone and the Phil Lynott-led Thin Lizzy. And then there’s artists who aren’t as well known but maybe should be: Early ‘70s Detroit’s Black Merda, Atlanta lifers Mother’s Finest, metal-jazz pioneers James Blood Ulmer and Last Exit. There are also the largely forgotten thrash pioneers like San Franciso’s Stone Vengeance, L.A.’s Sound Barrier and Chicago’s Znöwhite. All that’s keeping Richard Pryor's way-ahead-of-their-time 1977 metal parody Black Death and the pre-teen Brooklyn trio Unlocking the Truth from the playlist is that they haven’t actually released any music. Regardless, when you’re done with this mix, you may never see metal the same way again.