Death Metal

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Origin: Mid-1980’s Florida and California

Characteristics: Fast tempo. Even more aggressive drumming. Fast riffing, often tremolo-picked. Harsh vocals.

Typical live hand gesture: 🤘

What is the appeal?: High-energy catharsis; self-indulgent fun; feeling badass and powerful

While thrash metal was easily the most aggressive and fastest genre of metal in the early 1980’s, by the middle to end of the decade, death metal had spawned from thrash’s darkest corners, and pushed the limits of speed and brutality in metal beyond even thrash. Everything about thrash metal was turned up and made darker, from the vocal delivery and lyrics, to the riffs, and especially to the drumming, which would incorporate double-bass drumming and even blast beats to a greater extent than thrash metal did.

Ridiculously fast riffs and drumming? Frantic guttural vocals? Grotesque lyrics and imagery? Yep, this is death metal!

While the honor of first full-length death metal album often goes to Possessed’s Seven Churches, the single most influential death metal band in the genre’s formative years was Florida’s Death, formerly known as Mantas, run by vocalist and guitarist Chuck Schuldiner. Schuldiner has been titled the “godfather of death metal,” though he was too humble of a musician to flaunt or even fully accept that title. Almost all of Death’s albums are regarded as death metal classics, from the early, genre-defining brutal style of Scream Bloody Gore and Leprous to the more progressive and cerebral The Sound of Perseverance.

Death’s early work was raw, fast, and aggressive, at the same time feeling downright haunted and evil compared to thrash at the time.
A picture of Chuck Schuldiner holding a puppy : musicpics
Death mainman Chuck Schuldiner, often credited as the father of death metal. (Photo credit: Reddit)
Death’s later work was decidedly progressive, featuring longer and deeper songs, a larger variety of timbres, and exploring philosophical lyrical themes.

Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of death metal are the harsh vocals, often growled or even gurgled. The signature “death growl” of the genre can take some getting used to for listeners, and metal explorers tend to have one artist or album that got them used to the vocal style. Interestingly, one of the first known recordings of something resembling a “death growl” was on The Who’s 1966 song “Boris the Spider.”

At about 30 seconds in is one of the first known recorded “death growls,” obviously not referred to as such at the time.

Death metal is still going strong today, with just as many bands playing brutal, modernized death metal as there are playing grimy old-school death metal. Modern bands tend to have thicker production, while bands paying tribute to old-school death metal sound like they are fresh out of the 1990’s.

Formed of members from Katatonia, Opeth, and Paradise Lost, Bloodbath’s take on death metal is a tribute to 1990’s Swedish “graveyard” death metal.
Blood Incantation are another band paying tribute to old-school death metal, even evident in their production.
Misery Index perform brutal and aggressive modern death metal.

Being one of the longest-standing and most successful genres of underground extreme metal, death metal has spawned numerous subgenres and crossover genres. The most notable of these are melodic death metal, technical and progressive death metal, blackened death metal, death-doom metal, and deathcore.

Melodic Death Metal

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Origin: Early 1990’s Sweden and Britain

Characteristics: Death metal harshness and darkness, with the melodic riffs and harmonies of classic heavy metal

Melodic death metal is a fusion genre of death metal and classic “heavy” metal. “Melodeath” songs retain the dark atmosphere, intensity, and harsh vocals of death metal, adding melodic riffs and harmonies that wouldn’t sound out of place in the music of Iron Maiden.

Dark Tranquillity’s “Punish my Heaven” fuses frantic drumming and riffing with harmonized melodies and a mystical atmosphere. The Gallery is a melodeath classic.
The Jester Race is another melodic death metal classic. In Flames’ music is adorned with melancholic harmonies.

Melodeath was largely created by four European bands in the early 1990’s: Dark Tranquillity, In Flames, and At the Gates, of Gothenburg, Sweden, and London’s Carcass, who had previously played more straightforward death metal. All of these bands’ albums released around this era were hugely formative in the melodic death metal sound, particularly Dark Tranquillity’s The Gallery, In Flames’ The Jester Race, At the Gates’ Slaughter of the Soul, and Carcass’ Heartwork. Notably, though they are regarded more highly in progressive death metal than in melodeath, Sweden’s Edge of Sanity infused thrashy death metal with heavy metal melodies (and, later, progressive rock songwriting) as early as 1993’s The Spectral Sorrows.

Often associated more with their progressive kin such as Opeth, Dan Swanö’s Edge of Sanity were another early adopter of a melodic death metal sound.
One of the early adopters of melodeath based outside Sweden, Carcass’ Heartwork saw them take on a heavy metal-influenced melodeath style. The title track has gnarly riffs, mid-tempo melodies, and fist-pumping choruses.

Interestingly, the albums released by the Gothenburg trio prior to those mentioned carried an experimental and artsy edge that would later become a rarity in the genre. In particular, Dark Tranquillity’s Skydancer and At the Gates’ The Red in the Sky Is Ours still sounded like melodeath, but were largely through-composed, each song composed of flowing, barely-repeating melodic riffs.

Early melodeath albums such as At the Gates’ The Red in the Sky Is Ours and Dark Tranquillity’s Skydancer were less conventional in their songwriting. Red in the Sky is a bombardment of eerie melodic riffs.
The first track on the aforementioned Skydancer, “Nightfall by the Shore of Time” similarly darts from harmonized riff to harmonized riff.
For the most part, melodic death metal has not changed very much since its inception. Big melodic riffs and a melancholic, mystical atmosphere are still commonplace, albeit with more polished production. Valtari are just one of many passion projects still working on this endearing subgenre.
Scar Symmetry, on the other hand, perform a modernized take on melodic death metal, utilizing lower tunings and heavy percussive riffing, along with typical melodic choruses.
Insomnium are another band playing more typical melodic death metal, sounding like a more uplifting Dark Tranquillity at times.

Technical Death Metal

Origin: Early 1990’s USA

Characteristics: Usually-fast death metal with an emphasis on technical instrument playing

In the early 1990’s, Death were far from the only death metal band embracing more progressive songwriting and more technical instrumental performance. Along with fellow Floridian bands Atheist and Cynic, Death’s work after and including Human was influential on a new scene of death metal that would later be distinguished as technical death metal. Just how different technical death metal was from progressive death metal would vary on the artist; a band like Gorguts was far more focused on technical guitar playing than one like Opeth whose music was distinguished by grandiose progressive songwriting. For this guide, exploration of bands like Opeth is under “progressive extreme metal” on my page for progressive metal.

Bands like Atheist wrote progressive songs full of technical riffs and quick change-ups. Atheist were a big influence on progressive and technical death metal.
With Obscura, Gorguts pushed the envelope of death metal. The riffs are technical as they are unconventional and frankly downright unsettling. Reviewers note that this is not how death metal is typically written. Obscura would be labelled “avant-garde metal” as well as technical death metal.
Gorguts’ later work can still be seen as art metal, though it’s decidedly less jarring than Obscura. “An Ocean of Wisdom” assaults the listener with layers of melody.
Ulcerate have a unique style of technical death metal, incorporating heavy sludge riffs to create an oppressive, crushing atmosphere. Jamie Saint Merat’s drumming is full of nuance.
On the other end of the “tech-death” spectrum we have this all-out assault on the senses, complete with lightning-fast riffs and imagery of crazy aliens.

Works Cited

“Obscura by Gorguts.” Rate Your Music, Sonemic Inc., rateyourmusic.com/release/album/gorguts/obscura/.