Death metal is an extreme subgenre of Heavy Metal that often centers around violent themes like violence, Satanism and Occultism.
Death metal music is fast, aggressive and often catchy with catchy riffs and galloping rhythms that encourage headbanging. Technical death metal (aka Tech Death) requires even faster playing speeds from musicians while demanding even greater virtuosity from them.
Origins
Death metal began its rise during the mid ’80s as an outgrowth of ultra-heavy thrash bands like Slayer who wanted to add something unique and progressive to their sound. Florida-based Death, Possessed and Morbid Angel brought antireligious themes together with an emphasis on occultism to create something truly distinctive and socially aware in their music. Other acts like Britain’s Napalm Death were known to focus more on musical exploration and technical guitar riffing styles; their 1990 album Harmony Corruption is considered a landmark release within this genre. Their music consisted of aggressive yet fairly advanced riffs combined with techniques such as palm muting, tremolo picking and blast beats. Vocals featured guttural roars, grunts and low gurgles reminiscent of Sesame Street character Cookie Monster in which death growls were also frequently heard.
Major music scenes often develop around larger cities; however, Tampa in Florida was home to an emerging death metal movement with Slayer, Obituary, Massacre, Sepultura and many others forming part of its scene.
Dark Tranquillity, Entombed and Carnage were among the early pioneers of melodic death metal in Sweden. This genre takes a fast technical approach of thrash metal while adding melodic and intricate riffs with clean or semi-clean vocal passages for added diversity.
While gruesome topics remain an essential component of death metal, its lyrics have begun to move away from antireligious themes that were initially so prominent in its beginnings. This can be seen with Gorguts’ 2016 release Virvum which focused on philosophical and existential topics rather than explicit anti-religious messages; Atheist and Cynic both provided experimental soundscapes featuring more complex compositions with jazz fusion influences that further broadened death metal’s boundaries.
Characteristics
Death metal bands often glorify violence and death as central themes in their music, with fights becoming an expected part of live shows, often happening between audience members at shows – fights being commonplace – while bands have even been known to perform at unconventional locations like VFW halls and backyards!
Death metal bands are defined by fast drumming, harsh vocals and dark subject matter. The genre was developed initially by bands who enjoyed the ultra-heavy thrash music of Slayer and Hellhammer but wanted to take it further. Early death metal acts, like California’s Possessed and Florida’s Morbid Angel were known for incorporating elements of occultism while others took an antireligious stance into their music.
Through the 1990s, death metal bands continued to push musical creativity and virtuosity to unprecedented levels. Bands such as Carcass, Cannibal Corpse and Obituary cemented themselves as pioneers of technical death metal; an emerging subgenre which marries high degrees of musical virtuosity with complex rhythm guitar riffing patterns and unconventional time signatures.
Other bands focused on melodic death metal, which combines brutality with catchy guitar harmonies and melodies for maximum musical impact. Bands like In Flames and At the Gates made this style of death metal iconic.
More recently, bands have begun incorporating elements from other genres such as hardcore punk and black metal into their sound, creating new styles such as deathgrind and blackened death metal. Death metal itself has also given birth to hybrid forms like crossover thrash and grindcore which feature fast and frenetic drumming; in addition, mathcore and metalcore draw inspiration from death metal’s technical prowess.
Influences
Death metal music draws upon many different influences to form its many subgenres. Generally, these subgenres can be identified by heavy distortion, fast drumming and guitar work, growled vocals that imitate monster-like vocals, growl-based growling vocals that sound like someone trying to imitate one, as well as themes of violence, horror or death. Death metal bands originally took influence from both thrash metal and black metal styles but sought to make their music even more extreme by lowering vocal pitches further distorted guitars more heavily while playing faster than their counterparts did thrash metal bands did.
The musicians of the second generation took their music even further, experimenting with various techniques to form a distinctive style. Groups such as Venom, Celtic Frost and Possessed expanded upon traditional thrash metal sound while also adding more aggressive elements, including harsh vocals and shocking lyrics. Their drummers frequently employed blast beats techniques which required playing each note quickly in sequence.
In the 1990s, numerous labels dedicated to this genre came into existence; Earache Records, Relativity Records, and Roadrunner Records quickly becoming among the genre’s leading labels during this era. They produced albums by bands like Carcass, Napalm Death and Morbid Angel.
Other bands have explored hybrid forms of death metal with other genres, like Atheist and Cynic who combine sounds influenced by prog-rock and jazz with crushing distortion to create what has come to be known as progressive death metal.
Some bands have explored more religious and philosophical topics. Behemoth, the Polish satanic band known for its lyrics inspired by occultism, Satan worship, and cinematic gore is one such band.
Lyrics
Death metal’s pioneers took the themes and tempos from thrash bands like Metallica and Judas Priest and amplified them, using deep growling vocals, low tuning guitars, blast beat drumming and minor keys to communicate themes such as violence, serial killers, cannibalism, disease and death.
Initial death metal bands featured lyrics specializing in gore, murder, disease, religious fanaticism and satanic rituals in their music. Bands such as Carcass, Death and Obituary adopted what is known as death growling from thrash metal – vocalizing through death growling instead of screaming!
True death growling refers to a vocal technique using lower vocal notes fed through distortion, in contrast to “fry” screaming techniques or false chord screaming which use harsh vocalization techniques like false chord screaming and other methods of vocalization.
Some bands employ an intricate form of death growling with higher note ranges – this style is known as melodic death metal, and bands that create it often incorporate melodies reminiscent of both thrash and power metal as well as progressive rock influences into their compositions – one such band being Finland’s Amorphis.
Progressive death metal blends the chaotic song structures and offbeat time signatures associated with progressive music with extreme metal music. It first emerged with Death’s 1991 album, Human.
Melodeath metal, more commonly referred to as melodeath, employs melodic riffs and galloping rhythm to produce songs with a headbanging experience. First popularized by Swedish bands Entombed and Dismember, but quickly spreading throughout North America via bands like The Black Dahlia Murder and Killswitch Engage; some bands like In Flames and Soilwork lean towards thrash metal while The Haunted more closely resemble death metal in terms of sound production.
Chuck Schuldiner
Chuck Schuldiner was one of the founding members and frontmen for DEATH. His music played an influential role in creating death metal as a genre; yet his legacy extends far beyond this genre. Since his passing from brain cancer ten years ago, metal musicians have honored both him and DEATH by producing tribute albums or writing thoughtful analyses of their favorite tracks.
Schuldiner was not known as one of the finest vocalists, yet still managed to use his shrieks and growls to convey emotion and add depth to music with ease. Additionally, his influence can be found in how metal bands use lyrics to evoke images or emotions; for instance, many death metal bands make use of horror movie dialogue or phrases as reference points for violence and gore found within these movies.
Death’s debut album Scream Bloody Gore set the bar high for death metal music in 1987. Their trademark mix of aggressive music and cheeky lyrics quickly become an industry standard; more bands quickly followed suit in mimicking their style.
Death’s later albums take a slower approach, allowing the group to explore a wider variety of rhythmic tempos and emotional tones, with complex riffing patterns and extended guitar solos becoming an integral component.
Death had begun to lose their edge against the growing grunge scene by the mid-’90s, following Chris Reifert leaving to form Autopsy and Rick Rozz joining Mantas as bassist; thus necessitating new members for live shows.
Death managed to record one last album with original members called The Sound of Perseverance before disbanding in 2000, though its influence can still be heard today. It showcases cleaner production while still maintaining their signature technical sound from earlier material; furthermore it features Chuck’s distinctive soar-throat vocal style as opposed to the cookie monster shrieks of earlier years.