as a general rule i think black metal just sounds better when its ghetto as fuck.
take the newest Mayhem record for example. "Ordo ad chao" is excellent in my opinion. Because for me black metal is more about the ambience and atmosphere, than the brutality. Most of that stuff of old, darkthrone, burzum, etc has a kind of etheral vibe to me. Like the drums dont need to be super punchy, the vocals can be more or less inaudible in places, the guitar tremelo blurs almost into a wall of sound. I mean 'Grand declaration of war' for me is a horrible record. Its clean and brittle and it has no atmosphere in comparison to old Mayhem albums.
One of the greatest things ive ever heard in the last few years is this record, a one man project by the name of Murmurre.
http://murmuure.bandcamp.com/
I can't recommend this highly enough. If you wanna be sold on one track listen to Amethyst - beautiful and unsettling in equal measure.