Decibel's Top 100 Death Metal Albums of All Time Special Issue by Red Flag Media

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E XT R E M E LY E XT R E M E  D EC I B E L M AG A Z I N E .C O M

IV Part 1, The Purple EP *Get your music from a record store. Find them at www.mymetalclub.com

E V A R G

Endless Procession of Souls

Utilitarian Napalm Death

KRISIUN

THE GREAT EXECUTION *Get your music from a record store. 1 Find them at www.mymetalclub.com

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EXTREMELY EXTREME

Death Metal Special Issue

PUBLISHER

Alex Mulcahy

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Albert Mudrian

MANAGING EDITOR

alex@redflagmedia.com albert@redflagmedia.com

Andrew Bonazelli

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just words

DECIBLOG EDITOR

Andrew Bonazelli

andrew@decibelmagazine.com

Full disclosure: I wasn’t com-

pletely on board when one of my cooler friends (who actually still writes for this magazine) first introduced my underdeveloped teenage brain to the likes of Napalm Death (Harmony Corruption) and Carcass (Symphonies of Sickness) well over two decades ago. Anyone who knows me will tell you—whether it’s embracing SIERA as a tool to evaluate pitching performance or launching a Twitter account—I am slow to adapt to the obvious. Over the years, I’ve met many of you who had similar experiences with death metal—it quickly evolves from a morbid curiosity to an uncontrollable, ravenous obsession. Back in the dark ages of the early ’90s, this was a difficult road to navigate—one path lead to the gory glory of Morbid Angel, Entombed and Obituary, while another pointed to virtually everything released on JL America. So, we scanned the thanks lists of good bands, devoured any zine we could find, plopped down our meager teenage earnings and hoped for the best. It was all part of the adventure. And even when you drew a bad record, hey, it was still a death metal record. Today it’s clear that no other form of music has had a greater effect on my life. That nascent obsession opened doors to other genres—funeral doom, black metal, sludge, metallic hardcore—built on death metal’s pummeling foundation. All of that, of course, helped forge Decibel’s very existence. But we’re here to honor only one genre today. It’s impossible to understate the place these 100 death metal classics occupy in not only Decibel’s universe but—more importantly—extreme music at large. A total of 22 of them have been inducted into our Hall of Fame, and interviews are complete for a 23rd, which will be out in 2013 (hint: the record is featured in the 30s on this list). So, grab a tall boy (or a CD longbox), kick back and enjoy the next 27,000 words of exclusive new content—it’s literally two decades in the making.

from the editor

albert mudrian, Editor-in-Chief

Anthony Bartkewicz Adrien Begrand J. Bennett Shawn Bosler Brent Burton Richard Christy Liz Ciavarella-Brenner John Darnielle Jerry A. Deathburger Chris Dick Jeanne Fury Nick Green Joe Gross Jonathan Horsley Scott Koerber Daniel Lake Frank Lemke Shawn Macomber Shane Mehling Kirk Miller Greg Moffitt Justin M. Norton Matt Olivo Etan Rosenbloom Kevin Sharp Rod Smith Zach Smith Kevin Stewart-Panko Adem Tepedelen Jeff Treppel Jeff Wagner CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

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To order by phone: 1.215.625.9850 (10 a.m. – 6 p.m. EST) To order by fax: 1.215.625.9967 To order online: www.decibelmagazine.com Decibel (ISSN 1557-2137) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Annual subscription price is $29.95. Periodical postage, Philadelphia, PA, and other mailing offices. Submission of manuscripts, illustrations and/or photographs must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited materials. Postmaster send changes of address for Decibel to Red Flag Media, 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia PA 19107. Copyright ©2012 by Red Flag Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited. PRINTED IN USA

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presents

WAY BACK

in April 2006, we took our first stab at a “themed” issue, and while our goal was to fuck your hearts and minds with that Cannibal Corpse-wielded blade, in retrospect, our incisions were considerably more exacting via ensuing special issues on stoner rock, grindcore, zombies and women in metal. Death metal is arguably the most essential invocation in Decibel Decibel’s monthly bible of gore–if you’ve already skipped ahead, you’ve noticed a sizable portion of this list already inducted in our hallowed Hall of Fame–so six and a half years later, we figured it was time to truly do the genre justice. That means an entire issue’s worth of 100 percent exclusive and new content, including this most insalubrious Top 100 countdown, infinite Top 5 lists from virtually every important living name in death metal, and Stockholm contrarians Unleashed finally crashing their longboat into the HOF. It should come as little shock that 1991 is all the fuck over the top 100, representing a whopping 20 percent of the list, but we also peppered in Decibel Decibel-era (2004-2012) albums from artists like Portal, Obscura and Origin that have kept the genre on its scabrous toes. And if all of that somehow doesn’t do it for you, well, in the words of our editor-in-chief, come on, “all those record sleeves look stupid awesome one after another!” andrew bonazelli

100

Master

Portal

nuc l e a r bl a s t (1 9 9 0 )

prof ound l ore (2007 )

Paul Speckmann was one of the first working death metal musicians; he still doesn’t get nearly enough credit for his place in the genre’s formation. The Chicago native is sort of like his hometown Cubs in that he works his ass off and you always root for him to pull off the big one, and yet people still seem to overlook his contributions and passion. Master’s eponymous debut came after Speckmann left his project Death Strike to reform his first band. Master is informed as much by Venom and early punk as it is metal, and Speckmann’s blistering social critiques–still a feature of his music today–were already full-formed on this record. His version of the “Pledge of Allegiance” is a wry twist on a classroom staple. “Funeral Bitch” is fast and dirty; and you can practically hear Speckmann sneer. Speckmann flaunts his bass prowess in the opening to a cover of Black Sabbath’s “Children of the Grave.” While many death metal albums are far too long, Speckmann needed 20 minutes and some change to make an impression. Has he shaved since this was recorded? We think not. The guy looks like metal’s Rip Van Winkle. justin m. norton

Death metal is more often than not preoccupied with trying to sound imposing and scary, from the music to the lyrics and artwork. It’s a given, but for all of Cannibal Corpse’s brilliantly disgusting work, let alone goregrind, in less skilled hands it can amount to little more than overgrown adolescents trying to “out-gross” one another. That’s not scary. Portal are scary. Hailing from Australia, these four anonymous musicians were unearthed by Profound Lore in 2007, and their second album was unlike any other death metal record at the time. With a bonedry, suffocating tone that buried ultracomplex riffs underneath a layer of dense bass and drums, and featuring a frontman who spewed horrific, Burroughsian cut-up imagery in a voice so wizened you could practically see the dust escaping his lungs, Outré exudes death, plain and simple. Couple that with a visual presentation that was equally surreal and imposing–we’ll never forget the Curator’s creepy clock head–and you’ve got a strikingly original, puzzling, terrifying band. Be afraid. Be very afraid. adrien begrand

Master

Outré

here’s a question I’ve been asking myself since this album was released back in May of 2011: How can three of the nicest, most down-to-earth, hilarious and gustatory-obsessed dudes you’ll ever meet create sounds this callous and otherworldly? Hate Eternal have always had a Phoenix Amongst solid fan base that originated afthe Ashes ter four previously well-received metal b lad e ( 20 11) and robust albums. Then, there’s the cult-like following of Morbid Angel pedants and studio nerds continually wanting to get inside Erik Rutan’s head. But Phoenix Amongst the Ashes saw the band bump everything up a notch. When Rutan wasn’t busy making his guitar sound like a swarm of hornets drunk on nuclear waste (“The Art of Redemption”), the foot the trio had firmly planted in death metal was being spiced up with a certain combustible flair that fell somewhere between their innate tendencies, the weirder side of Japanese hardcore, mathy technicality and a swath of Jersey-based heavy hitters (Human Remains, Deadguy, Burnt by the Sun, etc.) playing a mix of noises that had you feeling like you were getting rochambeaued in a back alley of a Chinese restaurant in Secaucus. kevin stewart-panko

Hate Eternal

MY TOP 5 ERIK

RUTAN

Hate Eternal Morbid Angel, Altars of Madness Suffocation, Effigy of the Forgotten Deicide, Deicide Cannibal Corpse, Eaten Back to Life Death, Scream Bloody Gore

Pungent Stench Been Caught Buttering nu c l e a r b l a s t (1 9 9 1 )

Boasting a filthy-as-fuck guitar tone that sounds like something off which an actual pungent stench might waft, a series of Cannibal-Corpse-by-way-of-Stuart-Gordon song titles–e.g. “Brainpan Blues,” “Happy Re-Birthday,” “Splatter-

day Night Fever”–and a musical palette as wide as it is deranged, Been Caught Buttering has, even in its few controlled moments, the aural gait and mien of a PCP-addled schizophrenic auditioning for a Faces of Death segment. It sure as hell isn’t a perfect death metal specimen–some of the musical freakouts are undeniably more successful than others; a bit of the doomy stuff is a little halfhearted to go on as long as it does–but when Pungent Stench are on point, the band is uniquely entertaining. (See, for example, the detuned grinder “Games of Humiliation,” which closes with a full, brilliantly bizzaro minute of Martin Schirenc grunting and gurgling over indie jam band noodling.) Pungent Stench’s ability to bring a primitive Wolverine Blues-esque brutality on tracks like “And Only Hunger Remains” and “S.M.A.S.H.” keeps Been Caught Buttering from veering into har-har-har Scatterbrain territory, making for a solid oddball curio addition to any already well-curated death metal collection. shawn macomber

Bolt Thrower …For Victory

Decapitated Winds of Creation ear ache ( 20 0 0)

It’s testimony to Winds of Creation’s greatness that a cover of exalted Slayer Once the gathering storm intro of classic “Mandatory Suicide” is the al“War” is pummeled in tutti with staccato bum’s only forgettable moment. Decapistops over the massive, climbing riff of tated’s searing debut is notable for many “Remembrance,” and the faint sky-rip of things, but one really sticks out: the band reverberating munitions (or explosion? was all teenagers when they wrote and or sniper peal?) stirs the band into attack recorded it. Drummer Witold “Vitek” (Karl Willetts rasping, “Nightmare world Kiełtyka was only 15, his older brother / Reflected as a dream”), we are once again on guitar, Wacław (a.k.a. Vogg), was 17; riding along with the Bolt Thrower cavDecapitated’s tender age belied their abilalry headlong into their war-themed style ity to deliver not only generic tech-death that, by now, has transcended gimmick precision barbarity, but to do so with such and been cast as venerated institution. signature brio. This album cleanly breaks with the Recorded in 1999 in the company of Warhammer fetishism and defines the producer and responsible adult Piotr bulk of their career: the romantic squeezWiwczarek of Vader, Winds of Creation ing of honor from the stone of battle. is an all-Polish affair. Imagine what was And–like seeing a disabled vet–you going through Wiwczarek’s mind, a almost want to thank Bolt Thrower for 34-year-old, watching these coltish death their service. Andy Whale’s steed-like heads pull together a record full of beats drumming has always complemented and riffs that manage to be both rhyththe thunderhead of those lyrical riffs mically alien, yet mother’s milk to the and the undercurrent of Jo headbanger primate in all of Bench’s grindy bass (posus. Vogg’s riff-articulation sibly the best dirty tone in MY TOP 5 was so individualistic, Dethe business, billowy with capitated so cavalier; Winds buzzing low-mids). From resuscitated a genre whose the rolling groove of “Arcreativity was calcifying at Decapitated mageddon Bound” to the the turn of the millennium. leaning propulsion (snare Morbid Angel, Not since The Goonies have on the downbeat, not the Covenant a bunch of kids been so backbeat!) of “Graven Iminspirational. jonathan Deicide, Deicide age,” what this album has horsley Vader, Sothis most is ultimately what we keep returning for: that Hate Eternal, British sense of stately Conquering the melody–elegiac nobility– Throne that makes Bolt Thrower Morbid Angel, one of a kind. matthew Domination widener ear ache ( 19 9 4)

VOGG

The Crown

Opeth

Crowned in Terror

Blackwater Park

metal b lad e ( 20 0 2)

mu si c fo r n at i o n s (2 001)

Should we have drawn a line after Cracking into the hallowed pantheStill Life when considering Opeth alon of essential death metal has bordered bums for this list? Possibly. Blackwater on impossible since the old millennium Park remains a sore point for Opeth fans faded into the new without unleashing who favor the band’s earlier, more undia global holocaust, or even the merest luted work, but the sweeping overtures whisper from a returned and wrathful on this album offer heaps of insight into deity. Purists huddle in dens crusted Opeth’s evolution into a full-on progreswith late ’80s/early ’90s filth, hurling sive act. We’ll even go as far as endorsing decades-old excrement at anything the unpopular contrarian stance here: fresher than a Nihilist demo cut. But dB Blackwater Park isn’t has rarely been accused of about slamming doors harboring purists, and we shut on death metal, but eagerly welcome the thorny MY TOP 5 opening new pathways to Crowned in Terror into our MIKAEL a more enlightened form bloody arms and ears. hough Paradise Lost of musical expression. After proclaiming would, in retrospect, And, as a consequence, Hell’s arrival in 1999 and Opeth Opeth became a much deathexploding demon pogo on to create gothic Morbid Angel, more dynamic and interetry all over Deathrace King metal with second album Gothic, Altars of esting band once Michael just a year later, the Crown Madness and then make heshers everyÅkerfeldt learned to stop drafted Tomas Lindberg where–except the United States, Morbid Angel, worrying and love King and erupted once again Domination of course–fork over large sums Crimson. with CIT’s razor-sharp of money on music, merch and Blackwater Park is the production and dynamic, Entombed, Clandestine first of three albums Opeth nerve-wrecking songs. The other Painless “memorabilia,” recorded with Steven Wilriffs are supersonic cruise it was debut album Lost Paradise Death, Leprosy Lost Paradise son of Porcupine Tree. missiles straight up your that shifted zine/scene eyes from Autopsy, Mental Deliverance and Damnaschnozz-hole, percuspe a c e vi l l e (1 9 9 0 ) Tampa to Halifax, England. Funeral tion–recorded simulsion collapses all over the By blending the savtaneously and originally myriad devastatintended as a double-album–split the age instincts of death with the regal, funereal aspects of ing tempos, solos howl out of difference between “heavy” and “progthe churning chaos and vocals Candlemass, Gregor Mackintosh, Nick Holmes, Aaron Aedy, MY TOP 5 gy,” but Opeth combine both passions slash neurotically across the Stephen Edmondson and Matthew Archer masterminded GREG to dramatic effect on Blackwater Park. top of the mix. Fist-pumping new thought for others to follow, and subsequently expand Sometimes within the span of a single melodies stir deep inside these upon. But before the gallop of “Deadly Inner Sense” kicks track–“The Leper Affinity” fluidly altracks, lending further strength Paradise Lost in, the first noticeable thing about Lost Paradise is the green ternates between electric and acoustic to the record upon repeated Celtic Frost, guitars, death growls and clean vocals, robot art by Duncan Fegredo–also responsible for Darkspins. Studio Mega claims Morbid Tales discordant passages and soothing manhonorary membership in the throne’s Soulside Journey cover. It, unlike Amorphis’ The tras. Sure, “Dirge for November” takes band, especially on songs like Nihilist, Demos Karelian Isthmus, relates not to Paradise Lost’s rumbling, desa little while to warm up, but Blackwater “The Speed of Darkness” and perate death, but was crucial in hooking hordes of kids into Death, Scream Park is all about the journey and the des“Under the Whip,” when sound Bloody Gore the Brits’ unfriendly embrace. While some of Lost Paradise’s tination. nick green quality spells the difference material hasn’t aged gracefully, “Frozen Illusion,” “Rotting Autopsy, between simple coolness and Severed Survival Misery” and “Paradise Lost” are as vibrant and convincing actual face-fucking greatness. daniel lake Napalm Death, now as they were 22 years ago. chris dick Scum

ÅKERFELDT

Paradise Lost

MACKINTOSH

Exhumed

All Guts, No Glory

Edge of Sanity Crimson

re l a p s e (2 0 1 1 )

Since All Guts, No Glory was released bl a c k m a rk (1996) in July of 2011, I’ve witnessed Exhumed Beating Sleep, Fates Warning and live. A lot. And despite what the continGreen Carnation to the one-song album gent of only-old-school-is-real whiners punch, Edge of Sanity’s fifth album saw might say, the most energetic, compelthem expanding on the wide-scope direcling, interesting and cohesive part of tion begun with 1993’s The their show is when they Spectral Sorrows and 1994’s crank out new numbers Purgatory Afterglow. And, like “From Hammer to MY TOP 5 remarkably, the 40-minute Anvil,” “Distorted and “Crimson” track achieves MATT Twisted to Form,” “Death more balance and focus Knell” and “I Rot Within.” than the band’s prior couIn fact, I think I once made Exhumed ple albums. the crack that, when it Reeling in Opeth mainRepulsion, comes to constructing set man Mikael Åkerfeldt to Horrified lists, they shouldn’t have provide additional guitar to think so hard about it; Napalm Death, work and screams, Crimson just play All Guts, No Glory Mentally was bound for glory right Murdered from start to finish and evout of the gate. This is the ery night will be awesome. Carcass, career pinnacle of a band Kids, that’s how good this Symphonies of that had long grown out Sickness album is! of the comfortable SwedNot content to play it Death, Scream ish death metal template safe, All Guts is riddled Bloody Gore in search of more exotic with riffs informed by Autopsy, vistas. The song/album thrashy catchiness and Severed Survival never fails to succeed in its grindcore savagery, polarstorytelling aims, no matizing amounts of melody, ter how many times you’ve discordant chords and listened to it. Leader Dan MY TOP 5 more hooks than you Swanö did the audacious need to hang a portly-proJONAS thing and recorded a portioned body-mod-er. Crimson II seven years Upon the album’s release, later, writing, recording our EIC said something Bloodbath, and performing everything to the effect of most death Morbid Angel, himself. That album has its metal bands today being Altars of supporters, and Dan truly content on copying the Madness is The Man, but really, classics and how Exhumed Autopsy, Mental Crimson II remains a bland stand out because they’re Funeral coda next to the gigantic too busy writing the death landmark of the original. Entombed, Left metal classics to come. jeff wagner Hand Path I couldn’t agree more.

HARVEY

I t’s comforting when a confederacy of scene titans can be relied upon to deliver a true monument of Swedeath without dithering away songcraft in a too-many-cooks-style ego frenzy. When Katatonic core Jonas Renkse and AnNightmares ders Nyström shake off the Made Flesh Scandinavian drear to revel in cen t u r y med i a ( 20 0 4) gorefeasting with croaker Peter Tägtgren, then-Satanic Slaughter/future-Opeth timekeeper Martin Axenrot and multi-genre overlord Dan Swanö, the resulting nocturnal terrors can and indeed do gain corporeality. Shrugging off much of their other projects’ subtle refinement without abandoning any of the songwriting savvy that catapults their music over the slavering hordes, the highly credentialed quintet churns through 45 minutes of exquisitely undiluted death metal. “Cancer of the Soul” introduces tumbling tempos and eerie clean guitar melodies around Tägtgren’s enraged vocals. Follow-up “Brave New Hell” deepens the death grooves, and most of the remaining tracks trade between ferocious limb-ripping speed and spacious (yet blast-ridden) stalking. “Feeding the Undead” and “Year of the Cadaver Race” offer redlined levels of chaos. “The Ascension” wraps its apocalyptic visions in a slow, gorgeous majesty. Most notable, perhaps, is the deviously catchy and cunningly penned centerpiece “Eaten,” which damns entire libraries of tactless metal lyrics to eternal, dismal expendability. daniel lake

Bloodbath

RENKSE

kevin stewart-panko

Paradise Lost, Lost Paradise Morgoth, The Eternal Fall

Nuclear Death

Bride of Insect w i l d r ag s (1 9 9 0 )

We do not lightly induct bands into the hallowed Decibel Hall of Fame, so when Arizona extremists Nuclear Death and their ferocious 1990 debut Bride of Insect recently joined this exclusive club, be assured it was with very good reason. To put it bluntly, there’s never been another band quite like them. No particular aspect– death/grind crossover, blast beats, explicit lyrics, female vocalist–was unique, but put it all together and it sounds like nothing else. The chaotic backing is extreme enough–at times it sounds like the foursome are playing different songs–but factor in front-chick Lori Bravo’s fierce, flame-throwing vocals (think Sean Killian and Don Doty on meth) and you have a truly deranged cacophony. And if this demented whirlwind of dissonance and noise isn’t enough, then maybe lyrics dealing with incest, necrophilia, bestiality and necrobestiality–a new one on us, but logical if you think about it–will get the job done. Even the artwork displays a deeply-deranged mind at play; a damaged, diseased intelligence at once both calculating and out of control. Whether or not anyone in Nuclear Death was actually psychopathic, Bride of Insect is still nasty shit. greg moffitt

espite a legendary run as co-founding drummer/ vocalist for Morbid Angel in the mid-’80s, Mike Browning’s earlier work did little to prepare listeners for the extraterrestrial thrashing death-attack of his next outfit, Nocturnus. Imaginative songwriting and warp-speed MY TOP 5 soloing on the band’s early demos had already ignited the main engines, but the arrival of Louis Panzer as MIKE full-time keyboardist (a first for death metal) in 1988 The Key would be the liftoff thrust launching Nocturnus from ex-Nocturnus ear ache ( 19 9 0) the mosquito-ridden Florida swamps into a galaxy Slayer, Hell far, far away. Awaits Recorded at Morrisound under the watchful eye Celtic Frost, To of Tom Morris, The Key captures a mid-air duel between Browning’s beer-and-denimMega Therion Satanism and guitar prodigy Mike Davis’ fixation with science fiction and gamma Mercyful Fate, quadrants. The result? Forty-eight minutes of adventurous death metal by turns ultraMelissa/Don’t technical and savage (it all gels on tracks like “Visions From Beyond the Grave”), released Break the Oath at a time when experimentation was largely frowned upon. As an early admirer of the Demimonde, Mutant Star band, Trey Azagthoth helped grease the wheels for Nocturnus’ deal, with Earache calling Davis “the best technical lead guitarist in Florida.” Smitten with Nocturnus, Death, Human Azagthoth would eventually buy Davis’ yellow Jackson Warrior guitar used on The Key and employ it on various Morbid Angel recordings. scott koerber

BROWNING

Nocturnus

Immolation

Unholy Cult

Pan-ThyMonium Khaooohs r e l a p s e (1 9 9 3 )

Somehow merging ultra-heavy death and oddball experimentation in a way that never sounded kitschy or unnatural, this Swedish project band was once described by member Dan Swanö (Day DiSyraah was his P-T-M alias) as “Bolt Thrower on acid.” Fair enough, but despite skronking saxophone, KISS-esque guitar leads and a fascination with the sound of ticking clocks, there’s something about Khaooohs that sounds deadly serious despite the eccentricities. You can’t help but shake your head in awe as the album’s 11 tracks tumble out of the speakers in all their bizarreness. The surreal sounds of Pan-Thy-Monium–which also feaMY TOP 5 tured Dan’s Edge of DAN Sanity cohort Benny Larsson, a.k.a. Winter, on drums, and Dan’s exbrother Dag, a.k.a. Bloodbath, Äag, on guitar–were ex-Edge of Sanity, like a death metal verex-Pan.Thy. sion of French avantMonium jazz troupe Magma… or a bunch of Swedish Death, Leprosy hippies too strung out Death, Scream from smoking pulverBloody Gore ized copies of ApocalypDeath, Spiritual tic Raids and prints of Healing Dali’s The Persistence of Memory (the “meltDark Angel, Darkness ing clocks” one). Death Descends metal Dadaism for the seriously disturbed. Hobbs Angel of jeff wagner Death, Hobbs Angel of Death

SWANÖ

li st en ab le ( 2002 )

To follow Close to a World Below– the album that just may be Immolation’s most frenzied, chaotic and allaround brutal album–was not an easy task. After releasing four blistering albums in a row, all packed densely with a suffocating atmosphere of total uncompromising death, Unholy Cult was the hot serrated knife that cut to the bone. Call it streamlining, call it sonic expansion, call it some of the most innovative, powerful and evil tunes these Yonkers, New Yorkers have ever summoned. And, at the time, their best-produced. t’s 2008 and a metalfest All the signature anti-Christian is winding down after a tropes were present, as well as bassweekend of breakdowns, ist-vocalist Ross Dolan’s inhuman guttural grunt-sing, guitarist Bob bodyslams and out-of-staters Vigna’s unearthly brand of warbly, ridiculing the locals’ accents. dissonant-yet-majestic riffs, and Yours truly and Relapse’s thentheir always choice, over-the-top label manager are engaged in creative drumming. But with Unholy our years-long, ongoing music Cult, there was a much-needed sense of order and space–all the demonic discussion and shooting the forces that were spiraling through farewell shit. He asks if I’ve Antithesis the previous few albums, heard Antithesis, the sometimes in an overly rel a pse (2008) new Origin record clogged and semi-disorMY TOP 5 (the band was then ganized manner, were signed to the label). I say no. He gives me a look that’s tethered and brought unPAUL der the control of Dolan part-incredulity, part-mock shock and part-gentle chidand Vigna’s grand dark viing, and tells me to stay put. Origin sions. Better songwriting He tracks down fellow Relapse employees, who are begat more groove (“ReDeath, Human packing up and carting out whatever merch and invenluctant Messiah”), more Suffocation, tory they didn’t sell that weekend, getting ready for the axe-layering and martial Pierced From less-than-awesome drive back to Philly. Said individual atmospherics (“Unholy Within Cult”), and ample space actually dug through a bunch of randomly packed boxes Carcass, to let Vigna’s repetitive to get me a copy, because, as he claimed, Antithesis was Symphonies of heaviness expand into a must-hear and I had to experience its brilliant exposiSickness trance-y, drugged-out vistion of adventurous, space-age leaps towards how death Deicide, Deicide tas (“Rival the Eminent,” metal might sound in 2023. And he was fucking right “Bring Them Down”). Bolt Thrower, on the money! kevin stewart-panko shawn bosler …For Victory

Origin

RYAN

Incantation

Entombed

Wolverine Blues c o lum b i a / e a r a c he (1 9 9 3 )

Times must have been weird as fuck for Entombed ’round about this point of their career. Vocalist L.G. Petrov had gone and come back, there was the ridiculousness and ensuing fiasco of the Earache-Columbia deal, there was a backroom marketing strategy pairing with Marvel Comics, which included edited tracks and one song (“Out of Hand”) being removed from the album’s “Marvel” version, as handlers attempted to break the band into the mainstream. It’s wonder they weren’t crushed by the bullshit, let alone able to create a stunning work that defined just what death metal was capable of. It may have taken a while for fans to get used to the increased amounts of “roll” in the “death ‘n’ roll” equation, but folks eventually came around when it was realized that Wolverine Blues had no weaknesses. Entombed will always be recognized first and foremost for Left Hand Path, but Wolverine Blues features some of their greatest material (“Eyemaster,” “Hollowman,” “Out of Hand” and “Demon”) and I still crack out the “I’ve got a heart like a graveyard / They’re dying to get in” line from “Full of Hell” whenever someone wants to talk about my feelings. Fuck that! kevin stewart-panko

Diabolical Conquest r elapse ( 19 98 )

If Venom’s At War With Satan was a polite battle between good and evil, Diabolical Conquest is a bunker-buster hitting the divine kingdom. Cronos screams, “Let the joyous celebrations of Hell begin.” Incantation let loose with “Impending Diabolical Conquest.” There’s no room for niceties ure, Amongst the Catacombs or cute musical asides. Bombs are of Nephren-Ka is the one dropped. Carnage ensues. landmark record in Nile’s Diabolical Conquest is a benchmark in Incantation’s musical developdiscography. That’s why it’s ranked ment. Onward to Golgotha gets all the as the 18th best death metal album love in these parts (not to mention of all time, and why it’s part of the deluxe Hall of Fame vinyl treatDecibel’s esteemed Hall of Fame. ment), but Diabolical Conquest was However, formulaic as Nile’s music also a milestone. Incantation plowed even deeper into the darkness on this has been, their work in the 2000s record, finishing with a cannot be ignored, and In sound that’s lower than Their Darkened Shrines is In Their MY TOP 5 Hell. A crop of today’s another high-water mark, Darkened Shrines old-school death bands KYLE albeit for slightly different like Father Befouled, Varel a pse (2002) reasons. If Nephren-Ka was saeleth and Binah spent ample time spinning this classy in its indie approach, Incantation record. In Their Darkened Shrines is an all-out, big-budget blockbuster. Autopsy, After the 20-plus minStunningly produced by Bob Moore, painstakingly reMental Funeral ute “At War With Satan,” searched by guitarist/lyricist/mastermind Karl Sanders and Candlemass, the battle for heaven Epicus executed with extreme precision, tracks like “The Blessed continues. After the 16 Doomicus Dead,” “Unas Slayer of the Gods” and the astonishing fourminutes of “Unto InfiMetallicus nite Twilight/Majesty part suite that closes the album show how accomplished SandDismember, of Infernal Damnation,” ers and his mates had become as songwriters and performers. Pieces there aren’t bones left Most noteworthy, the album is accentuated by darkly beautiful for rodents. Conquest Incantation, acoustic, orchestral and ambient passages that only make the Mortal Throne of might be the wrong word visceral impact of Nile’s taut death metal even bigger. Gaudy? Nazarene for this album. DominaHell yes, but compared to a lot of dense-sounding death metal, tion is more accurate. Immolation, justin m. norton Dawn of it’s a veritable bacchanal for the ears. adrien begrand Possession

Nile

SEVERN

MY TOP 5 ESA

HOLOPAINEN Amorphis

Entombed, Left Hand Path

Demilich Nespithe

nec r o p o l i s (1 9 9 3 )

Infamous for its ridiculously llllloowwww vocal grunts (pre-pig grunt porn-death) and absurd song titles such as “The Planet That Once Used to Absorb Flesh in Order to Achieve Divinity and Immortality (Suffocated to the Flesh That It Desired),” “The Sixteenth Six-Tooth Son of Fourteen Four-Regional Dimensions (Still Unnamed),” and “Inherited Bowel Levitation–Reduced Without Any Effort,” there was more to Finland’s Demilich than mere novelty. Like the tangled riff complexities, into which they’d throw in the oddest notes in the strangest places, and the dizzyingly frequent time changes. As complex as it seemed back in 1993, however, Nespithe now sounds fairly orthodox, relative to the heightened complication and precision of modern tech-death bands. That’s not to say it’s dated or lacks potency. The music still shoves you down a portal into the most obscure dimensions you could ever comprehend. It’s one of those records where you hear something new each time. If you avoid super-weird death metal, stick with more orthodox Finnish bands of the era like Funebre or Demigod. The rest of you, go and levitate those inherited bowels, now! jeff wagner

Morbid Angel, Altars of Madness Carcass, Symphonies of Sickness Entombed, Wolverine Blues Autopsy, Severed Survival

lthough amorphis would

redefine melodic death metal on Hall of Fame album, Tales From the Thousand Lakes, it’s The Karelian Isthmus where the Finns emerged from the witching hour of their respective pasts–namely Abhorrence and Violent Solution–to alter history forever. Unlike most Finnish acts of the day, Amorphis row-boated across the Baltic Sea to neighboring Sweden for a visit to the prestigious Sunlight Studios. There, the young death metal outfit tracked The Karelian Isthmus. Amorphis’ debut album was initially described The Karelian as a brave mix of Entombed’s Left Hand Path and Isthmus Paradise Lost’s Gothic. That assessment dismissed r elapse ( 19 9 2) Amorphis’ Finnish attributes entirely. Guitarists Esa Holopainen and Tomi Koivusaari were way different from riffmen across Scandinavia. By weaving forlorn, almost folk-like melodies into their brutal assault–“Warriors Trail,” “The Lost Name of God” and “Grail’s Mysteries,” for example–the two axemen crafted contemplative death when no such thing existed, their soloing recalling Jukka Tolonen rather than Jeff Hanneman. The Karelian Isthmus also benefitted from excellent artwork, courtesy of Miran Kim’s emotion-filled cover and close-up inlay. In many respects, the deep blues, greens and reds of the battle scene complemented Amorphis’ panoramic death. chris dick

Amorphis

Cannibal Corpse Kill

metal b lad e ( 2006)

s satisfying as technical death metal can be, both on record and in a live setting, it’s even better when a band learns how to integrate strong melodies into the music without compromising its more extreme qualities. Arsis and Neuraxis are two bands that excelled at it, but Germany’s Obscura showed plenty of indications that they would be at the forefront of that melodic/technical hybrid before long. 2009’s Cosmogenesis was the one album that turned a lot of heads in the metal world, and in 2011 they fulfilled that promise with the near-masterful Omnivium. Led by guitar-god-in-the-making Steffen KumOmnivium merer, the ease with which Obscura created death re l a p s e (2 0 1 1 ) metal so challenging yet so accessible on Omnivium was astonishing, epitomized beautifully by opening cut “Septuagint.” With Hannes Grossemann’s fluid yet fast drumming and Jeroen Paul Thesseling’s smooth fretless bass adding tremendous richness to the already accomplished compositions, Obscura instantly established themselves as one of the very best death metal bands of the new millennium. The future’s in good hands. adrien begrand

Obscura

There is no question that these elder statesmen of gore-death have mastered the art of brutality. They’ve been as consistent as they’ve been crushingly heavy, but sometimes consistency–especially in this genre–means no surprises. So, whodathunk that in 2006, seemingly out of nowhere, the band dropped what may be their career high with Kill–their 10th studio full-length! Right out of the gate, the album roars with 13 tracks of uncompromisingly tight and maniacal aural hatred. Like braineaters who haven’t feasted in years, Kill attacks with a feel of a band totally reinvigorated and reborn. Sure, they’ve reinvented themselves before (take a look at the brilliant Bloodthirst, a record that defined Cannibal’s style, post-Barnes, throughout the 2000s), but Kill hit like an avalanche. It marked the return of guitarist Rob Barrett, and was the first MY TOP 5 to pair CC with noted enALEX gineer/producer and death maven Erik Rutan, who created one of the beefiCannibal est/grittiest albums ever Corpse recorded. Holy shit, the Morbid Angel, guitar tone is magic. (He Altars of just topped himself again Madness with CC’s newest, Torture.) Autopsy, To go along with these Severed Survival massive sounds, they upped the ante in the solo dept., Death, Scream Bloody Gore and absolutely, um, killed it with riffs and rhythms that Possessed, mesh past technicality with Seven Churches an unhinged grindcore feel. Immolation, shawn bosler Dawn of Possession

WEBSTER

Disharmonic Orchestra

Vader

De Profundis Cr o o n (1 9 9 5 )

Not to Be Undimensional Conscious nuc l ea r bl a st (1992)

Weird band name, weird album cover, weird album title, weird lyrics, Wh e n K y u s s / Q u e e n s of the weird music… Austria’s Disharmonic Stone Age mastermind Josh HomOrchestra were fiercely committed me sought a moniker for his fledgling to weirdness. Death metal itself is a tongue-in-cheek garage side project in weird thing, in essence, and this band the late ’90s, the guitarist ultimately made sure to take the genre’s inherent chose a phrase he’d spontaneously utbizarreness to new levels of obscure tered the first time a friend played him wonder. Listening to Not to Be Undia track by Vader: the Eagles of Death mensional Conscious almost feels like a Metal. Though no evidence to back practice in perversity, with all its varithe hunch readily exists, it seems ous eccentricities: the stabbing, angulikely, as Homme was exposed to one lar bass work of Herwig Zamernik; the of the exquisitely malevolent tracks Rush-steeped atmosphere of “Time off De Profundis, an album on which Frame”; the Pink Floyd-ish flourishes the Polish extreme music mainstays and Voivod-ian twists of the otherwise portray a Hotel California house band frantic “Groove”; the awful 30 seconds so overwhelmingly diabolical and devof botched rapping in “Return of the astating, their extended jams would Living Beat.” have turned Don Henley’s hair white, But where’s the death? No worries. redefined the “end of innocence” and It’s here; it’s just adulterated as fuck. sent the surly singer into the priestTheir grind origins appear as gray blur hood, where he would have found a in the fast parts, and there’s way to forgive even plenty of anguished singing Don Felder his tresMY TOP 5 and sick, blown-out guitar passes. tones throughout. Songs As a listener, the PETER such as “Perishing Passion,” experience of De Pro“Addicted Seas With Missing fundis can sometimes Vader Pleasure” and “Idiosyncrasy” feel like a through-thedwell in a similar headspace glass-darkly reflection Morbid Angel, as those first couple records of the album cover, Altars of by Swedish prog-death freaks featuring two dark anMadness Carbonized, if that reference gels lassoing a hooded Possessed, point helps. Predictably, the victim–this is a noSeven Churches DeeOrch trio evolved away frills, immaculately Death, Leprosy from death metal entirely afconceived and executter this album’s release. Like ed, standard-setting, Obituary, the song says, “With herds razor-sharp, pure Slowly We Rot of goofy gnus of groove, death metal record Deicide, Deicide make up peculiar names in that mercilessly throttrance.” Uh… yeah… riiiiight. tles consciousnesses. jeff wagner shawn macomber

hat do you do when you’re almost 10 years into your career, in the middle of a run that will likely never be matched in death metal, and your longtime vocalist and bassist bails to play in his wife’s S&M-themed band? If you’re Morbid Angel, you respond to the change and challenge with your fifth straight ball-buster: Formulas Fatal to the Flesh, one of the band’s most Formulas Fatal consistently underrated records. Morbid Angel abandoned anything to the Flesh overtly Satanic on this album, opting ear ache ( 19 9 8) for slightly headier fare and occasional Sumerian lyrics. Trey Azagthoth had lost none of his touch (that would come a decade into the new millennium); listen for the whining guitar that colors “Prayer of Hatred”; the brief but majestic solos on “Bil UrSag”; the effortless leaps from plodding to speedy to batshit crazy on “Covenant of Death.” Bassist and vocalist Steve Tucker was a more than ample substitute for David Vincent. We know you want to study every note of Altars of Madness, but don’t forget to spend time with this overlooked gem. justin m. norton

Morbid Angel

WIWCZAREK

Necrophagist

Repugnant

wi l l o w ti p (1 9 9 9 )

soul sel l er (2006)

Onset of Putrefaction

epitome of darkness

Listening to Onset of Putrefaction We ’ r e p r e t t y sure it was the NWOSDM plague pit that they is like trying to survive a ring match against a muscle-bound monstrosity climbed out of, but nonetheless, Rewith eight precision-trained fists and a pugnant take full advantage of the anti-genre all-for-one Swedish undamage-maximizing sense of timing. German tech mastermind and chamderground metal ethic. It’s the same pion note collector Muhammed Suiçunderground esprit de corps that makes mez delivers an inescapable smackit possible for death metal bands to down, with blows raining down, up, share stages with the likes of In Solileft and right in a righteously badass tude and Watain, and for it all to make barrage. In a powerful display of sense to the audience. control and vision, songs open with While they’re listed in the phonecharismatic riffage, then twist off book as residents of Stockholm suburb into frantic, cascading layers of chug Norsborg, Repugnant’s sonic identity ‘n’ chime before snapping back into owes just as much of a debt to German disciplined attention. thrash, and bands such as Celtic Frost The arpeggiated proficiency of and Necrophagia, as it does to first“Culinary Hyperversity” devours wave Swedeath such as Nihilist and the dichotomous concept of leads Carnage. there are a fair few tracks on and rhythms differing from solos– Epitome of Darkness that can be found such boundaries dissolve the moment on earlier Repugnant releases, which the first string is struck. The skinhitherto amounted to rehearsal tape stippling staccato of “Mutidemos, a live album late the Stillborn” somehow and a brace of EPs. But achieves an improbable catchithis is their definitive MY TOP 5 ness, and Suiçmez summons release, one that takes MARY an uncanny soulfulness from joy from a world over“Advanced Corpse Tumor.” run by escapees from Bass burbles masterfully out an over-subscribed Repugnant of “Extreme Unction” and hell. Zombies, NosPossessed, “Fermented Offal Discharge.” feratu, demonic possesSeven Churches The programmed drums batsion … Epitome is rife ter without ever succumbing with morbid psalms Morbid Angel, to robotic stereotypes, and in praise of horror Altars of Madness Necrophagist’s much-hailed movie ephemera that guitar guru handles gutare so OTT lyrically Death, Scream guzzling vokills better than a that they’ve got to be Bloody Gore great many throat-only fronttongue-in-cheek. But Entombed, Left fucks. Brutal technical death the jams are no less savHand Path metal often falls short of such age for it, and no less Necrophagia, magnificence, and rarely gets essential. jonathan Season of the better. daniel lake horsley Dead

GOORE

hough a generation of horrible metalcore bands widely believes otherwise, At the Gates, in fact, did not invent death metal with 1995’s Slaughter of the Soul. Sure, that record deserves every accolade bestowed upon it (including–spoiler alert–its top 10 ranking here), but the red in the ATG’s full-length debut holds an sky is ours equally special place in old farts’ d eaf ( 19 9 2) cold dead hearts. Curiously, there’s nothing about The Red in the Sky Is Ours that sounds particularly Swedish. It’s neither overly melodic nor buzzing with chainsaw guitars. And the lack of a Sunlight production and a weaker guitar tone (famously categorized by Kerrang! as the sound of “wet cucumbers”) soften its initial impact, but the angular riffing of founding guitarist Alf Svensson is what propels the record to its classic status. “Windows,” “Neverwhere” and the astonishing “Kingdom (Fucking!) Gone” are both elegant and unsettling, slowly sinking their hooks in your skin before tearing the flesh clean off the bone. And Jesper Jarold’s violin flourishes darken the mood, while Tomas Lindberg roars like a man absolutely fucking possessed. Twenty years ago, no other record sounded like The Red in the Sky Is Ours. Twenty years later–metalcore bands be damned–that’s the still the case. albert mudrian

At the Gates

Eucharist

A Velvet Creation MY TOP 5 TOMAS

LINDBERG

At the Gates Possessed, Seven Churches Death, Scream Bloody Gore Repulsion, Horrified Morbid Angel, Altars of Madness Autopsy, Mental Funeral

Sepultura Schizophrenia c o g u m e l o (1 9 8 7 )

Like Possessed, Brazil’s premier metal export find themselves somewhat split across the thrash/death divide. Their ramshackle 1986 debut EP Bestial Devastation and 1987 follow-up album Morbid Visions are practically protoblack metal in the Sodom vein, and certainly have a distinct reek of death about them. Their second full-length Schizo-

phrenia, however, is a markedly different beast, the arrival of guitarist Andreas Kisser adding greater technicality and a degree of melody hitherto unheard. Suddenly, the band sounded more like Kreator than Sodom–complete with proper guitar solos–but when the genre debates run out of steam, Sepultura’s influence on the then-emergent death metal style is obvious. Refinement and control are the watchwords here, two skills that all the great death metal outfits of the 1980s and early ’90s had to learn. And then there’s the sheer aggression; the unremitting anger and blind rage that runs through Schizophrenia’s veins like boiling oil. Viewed through the thrash lens, it’s right at the extreme end, where death metal seized the torch as thrash began to wuss out in a welter of Hawaiian shorts and skateboards. Sepultura never truly-embraced full-on death metal, but their place in its lineage is secure. greg moffitt

w r o n g agai n ( 19 9 3 )

Decrepit Birth Diminishing

Between Worlds Let’s just say the New Wave of Swedish Death Metal, or the “Gou n i qu e lead er (2 008 ) thenburg Sound,” might be differIn 2006, I saw Decrepit Birth open ent if it weren’t for the trailblazing for Cryptopsy and was underwhelmed. work of Eucharist. Who?! Framed in The songs (from their debut …And the tiny town of Veddige in 1989 and Time Begins) sounded like death metal formed–as far as recording purposes rehash, and vocalist Bill Robinson’s are concerned–three years later, the smoke-weed shtick got old fast. pissed-in teens were influential to Move forward two years, and sometheir elder statesmen (At the Gates, thing magical happened. Diminishfor example) for cutting a conteming Between Worlds revealed levels of porary edge to then-overly aggressophistication and dexterity most sive death. bands hope to achieve. Actually, it wasn’t so much conWhere did it come from? Woodtemporary as it was classical. Instead shedding? It’s hard to say, but the of citing thrash greats or ascendant leap was like going from junior high death metal demigods, the principals straight to grad school. Songwriter in Eucharist yanked Vivaldi out of his and guitarist Matt Sotelo’s work on grave for inspiration. This would have songs like “Reflection of Emotion” a profound affect in the way Markus and “A Gathering of Imaginations” Johnsson, Thomas Einarsson, Daniel was sophisticated enough for musiErlandsson (now in Arch Enemy) and cal nerds, but brutal Tobias Gustafsson arranged enough for moshers. and recorded music. Instead of Robinson turned into a a dirty, rackety din, Eucharist MY TOP 5 formidable death vocalwere clean and concise, razors BILL ist spinning apocalyptic made by a higher power. sci-fi tales, an Encino That being said, debut fullMan emerging from length A Velvet Creation didn’t Decrepit Haight-Ashbury ingarner much attention when Birth stead of the Paleolithic it was silently slipped into Gorguts, The with stories about walkmailorders in ’93 by Wrong Erosion of Sanity ing on the sun. He’s deAgain Records, but the few veloped so much that Suffocation, that heard it marveled at the Effigy of the he now substitutes for involvement and intensity Forgotten Suffocation’s Frank of songs like “Once My Eye Mullen when needed Suffocation, Moved Mountains,” “My for a tour. DiminishPierced From Bleeding Tears,” “The ReliWithin ing Between Worlds is gion of Blood-Red Velvet” one of the tech-death and opener “Greeting ImDeath, All monuments of the albums from mortality.” Part of Eucharist’s Human to new millennium. And charm wasn’t their proficiency The Sound of this band hasn’t even or youth. It was the pain, anxiPerseverance hit their full potential. ety and despair they conveyed. justin m. norton Unexpect, In a chris dick Flesh Aquarium

ROBINSON

MY TOP 5 MIKE

AMOTT

ex-Carcass, ex-Carnage

My Dying Bride As the Flower Withers

Darkthrone Soulside Journey pea c ev il l e (1991)

So u l s i d e Jo u r n e y is too often viewed as little more than as a fleeting pit stop in Darkthrone’s road to Mention My Dying Bride and Damascus conversion from supposmost metallers think “doom,” with edly gaudy death metal Pharisees to “death” coming a rather distant seccloven-hoofed purveyors of sootond (if at all). But before gothic melofestooned primitivist black metal. drama and clean vocals took front and Sure, given a hypothetical desert iscenter stage, MDB’s music was a disland choice between the former and tinctly deathly proposition. Not only the latter, the “unholy trinity” of A did they consider themselves a death Blaze in the Northern Sky, Under a Fumetal band, reviews of their 1990 neral Moon and Transylvanian Hunger demo Towards the Sinister and 1991 will come out on top every time, but 7-inch “God Is Alone” placed them chances of neo-Vikings marooning befirmly in the DM camp. It wasn’t until ing extraordinarily slim these days, the release of their first EP–1992’s we have the wiggle room to safely apSymphonaire Infernus et Spera Empreciate Soulside Journey for the dark, pyrium–that things really began to slightly flawed gem it is–a Sunlight change, but the band’s evolution was Studios-recorded (!) slab of driving, still fairly subtle. buzzsaw death metal cross-pollinated Released later the same year, As with glints of future wide-eyed tranthe Flower Withers is a bold and brave scendental fury. debut, which, like Paradise Lost just a Perhaps that isn’t enough of a couple of years before, marries death cold wind for the sort of tr00 kuland doom to spellbinding eftists whose grim visages fect. Before avant garde beare one part determined came déjà vu, its off-the-wall MY TOP 5 nihilism and two parts weirdness set it well apart corpsepaint-induced acne ANDREW from the death metal pack, scarring–and, yeah, to but its DM credentials rebe fair, Fenriz’s decision main impeccable. That fanto record the album My Dying cy (i.e., not featuring blood under the stage name Bride and gore) sleeve brings down “Hank Amarillo” doesn’t Death, Leprosy a psychological barrier, but help make the case to that delving into the album’s Morbid Angel, invisible orange-toting Altars of magnificent abyss and the jury. Nevertheless, those Madness torrid terror of “The Forwho can savor a spot of ever People,” “Erotic LitDeicide, Deicide black in their death will erature” and the perennial surely enjoy this bonfire Obituary, “Vast Choirs” is to enter in the southern peninsula. Slowly We Rot purest death metal darkness. shawn macomber Autopsy, greg moffitt Severed Survival pe a c e vi l l e (1 9 9 2 )

CRAIGHAN

Morbid Angel, Altars of Madness Death, Scream Bloody Gore Obituary, Slowly We Rot Dismember, Like an Ever Flowing Stream Autopsy, Severed Survival

oasting a who’swho lineup of Swedish death metal royalty before anyone had officially earned their scene points, the short-lived, underrated Carnage was spawned by Michael Amott and Johan Liiva and, following two demos and a glut of lineup shifts, released just one long-player before splitting in 1991. Dark The resulting Dark Recollections feaRecollections tures an ultra-recognizable cast of n ecr o si s ( 19 9 0 ) characters in guitarists Amott and David Blomqvist, vocalist Matti Kärki, drummer Fred Estby and bassist Johnny Dordevic (though credited on record, Amott actually recorded the bass tracks here), and spews forth nearly 40 fetid minutes of gristly, coffin-toned buzzsaw riffs, low-end bass runs, groove-addled breakdowns (“Blasphemies of the Flesh”) and more D-beats than you can shake a stick at. Punctuated by a blizzard of lead-footed interludes, bestial divebombs, Kärki’s echoing growls and a cavernous Sunlight production, Dark Recollections is a raw, punk-rooted display of unadulterated Stockholm sickness any bona fide Dismember fan should own (four of its 10 tracks appear on early Dismember demos, while two others were rerecorded: one as a bonus track on the Like an Ever Flowing Stream reissue, and the other for the Pieces EP). Still deliciously evil after all these years. Raise your claws! liz ciavarella-brenner

Carnage

Ripping Corpse

Dreaming With the Dead maze ( 19 9 1)

If you’re the sort of gravity-blast aficionado who invests total faith in the metronome, you could probably cite whole squadrons of death metal bands with tempos to blow New Jersey’s Ripping Corpse off the map. But how come Dreaming With the Dead still sounds

faster at full pelt than pretty much everything else? That’s music–an enigmatic beast that only your ears and gut can make sense of–certainly not weights and measures and quantized drum patterns. Death metal is all about being rad, and during their brutally short, single-album career, Ripping Corpse were totally rad. They took thrash and made it faster and darker–“Glorious Depravity” signposts the Slayer influence, and elsewhere they put muscle on Exhorderstyle grooves. No matter how intricate and exact, they always sounded savage. Dreaming With the Dead marked the debut of Erik Rutan on guitar, who soon after went south to Florida and replaced Richard Brunelle in genre kingpins Morbid Angel. Guitarist Shaune Kelley was also offered a trial with Morbid Angel, but he wanted to stick around and keep working on Ripping Corpse. Despite tracking the instruments, they never finished album number two. Maybe it was for the best; Dreaming would have been impossible to follow. jonathan horsley

MY TOP 5 FRANK

MULLEN

Suffocation

Morbid Angel, Altars of Madness

Gorguts

Atrocity, Hallucinations

Obscura

o l ym p i c (1 9 9 8 )

Sure, this second album by the Montreal band bears all the necessary characteristics of death metal: blast beats, relentlessly churning beats, guttural vocals. The unfortunate Pierced band name “Gorguts,” for crying out From Within loud. However, what listeners hear roa drunner (1995) on Obscura is unlike anything ever attempted in the genre before or since, Wasting no time, Suffocation start as guitarist Luc Lemay’s composicrunching numbers on the first riff of tions veer a lot closer to the jagged, the title track to Pierced From Within, atonal sounds of Captain Beefheart’s and despite pinching the tip, bust into Trout Mask Replica. Like that record, a full-fledged breakdown just 1:30 into what listeners hear on Obscura might the controlled bedlam. It’s this pushbe highly unique to the point of seempull pattern (speed-and-breakdown) that ing impenetrable, yet is hardly arbitrary, alien yet intricately arranged and cohesive. In addition, a strong post-punk The only album from these Vålberg, element underscores this album, Sweden natives, who existed from 1991 with many passages owing a lot to to 1993, is one of those the skronky sound of hidden/forgotten gems D.C.’s Dischord scene often forgot about of the late ’80s and MY TOP 5 when listing death metearly ’90s. Whatever al’s high-water marks. the influence, Lemay Granted, this was likely and Gorguts follow in Gorguts because it was released the groundbreaking Death, two years after its refootsteps of fellow Scream Bloody Gore cording–just as they Quebecers Voivod, Suffocation, were throwing in the creating something Effigy of the Forgotten towel–and was on a tiny inimitable, unprelabel and never given dedictable and groundMorbid Angel, cent release until Relapse Covenant breaking in a genre reissued it in 2002. best known for being Bloodbath, Full disclosure: I’m staunchly unwavering Unblessing the Purity also one of those who in its traditionalism. Hate Eternal, totally forgot about The adrien begrand I, Monarch

Suffocation

LUC LEMAY

Carcass, further reinforces the bruSuffocation worship the Symphonies of tal and exacting subgenre restrictions itself, having Sickness Suffocation built. This is learned that nothing is whiplashing stuff–you more brutal–and cruel– Pestilence, Consuming can see their mouths move, than starving the listener of Impulse counting time behind the meter and key by hurling all riffs–and more refined possibilities… at the same Cannibal than earlier efforts, tradtime! The Doug Cerrito/ Corpse, Eaten Back to Life ing novelty and youth for Terrance Hobbs axe duo is precision and hard-won so tight with Doug Bohn’s innovation. Suggestions of tonality stick-work that only the bass occasionally are summarily obliterated in an almost peeks through as human, harmonizing classical way, with shorthand death metal in growl above them; when your sanity tone rows, lest too glaring a musical key rests with the bassist, you know you’re in shine through. trouble! This is a soundscape of absolutMost extreme bands operate despite ism, of near abstraction, of perfection in the restrictions of extremity, where its way. matthew widener

Winterlong when Deathmaster General Mudrian asked for my nomination list. You can slap the back of my hand later, because after reconnecting with the album, you’d have a task trying to stop the fist-banging. While parts of it sound like an unholy mess due to the occasional settle-for-sloppy performance and the production–which pushed vocals above the already compressed guitars–there’s no denying the darkness and evilosity at work. God Macabre had all the hallmarks of the Swedish sound down, but approached it from a much more depressive, almost Finnish (!) state, with their use of the most minor of minor scales and chords, as well as mournful interludes and psychedelic flavoring. kevin stewart-panko

God Macabre The Winterlong m.b .r . ( 19 9 3)

Tiamat

Pestilence

Testimony of the Ancients roa drunner (1991)

The Astral Sleep

They started out thrash before getting punked by the full-on Cynic/ c e ntu ry m e d i a (1 9 9 1 ) Atheist mind-meld on ’93’s Spheres, but for a couple of years Pestilence Renowned for blowing brains were untouchable as far as super(and Century Media sales records) gnarly crossover death metal goes. with 1994’s matchless Wildhoney, Well, not strictly crossover, Swedish chameleons Tiabut the Dutch face-rippers mat have an extensive and used thrash and hardcore critical backstory. Formed MY TOP 5 to keep their death jams out of the ill-named TrePATRICK all light on their feet, with blinka in 1989, the Täbyjudicious stabs of prog to based quartet sported keep the brain working. corpsepaint, aliases (chiefPestilence Losing vocalist Martain Johan Edlund went by Death, Leprosy tin Van Drunen after ’89’s “Hellslaughter”), had ties similarly stellar Consuming to scenes in both StockPossessed, Impulse, Pestilence didn’t holm and Oslo, and were Beyond the Gates miss a beat, drafting Patthe first death metal act rick Mameli’s leonine to record at Sunlight StuMorbid Angel, growl to bring some raw dios. Though debut album Altars of meat vocal hunger to such Sumerian Cry is commendMadness doozies as “The Secrecies able for the space and time Ripping of Horror” and it occupies, follow-up effort Corpse, “ Testimony.” The Astral Sleep is where Dreaming With the Dead Mameli and Tiamat started their redPatrick Uterwijk letter run. Obituary, made an indomiTruly unlike anything Slowly We Rot table twosome in Sweden (or the world) at on guitar, and the time, The Astral Sleep is complemented Jedi-tech recognized as the first atmospheric bassist Tony Choy’s underdeath metal record ever. Whereas the-radar jazz/funk mores peers–in Sweden and elsewhere– perfectly. Even the instrupounded chests and Neolithic rock mental outros fail to leech like water-headed cavemen, Edlund’s the urgency out of an alTiamat were master scoresmen, light bum that is falling-off-theon their feet, deep in compositional tree ripe with drama and knowhow. Whether it’s sonic tributes character. There’s a real to H.P. Lovecraft, a soundtrack to the sense that Uterwijk and clash of ancient Levantine gods, or Mameli were riffing on acoustic guitar-driven odes to Lucilife’s big questions as they fer, The Astral Sleep progressed like warmed up the thrusters a mysterious, white-knuckle Werner before boosting out of the Herzog film, where the outcome is genre. At least they left us neither beneficial nor malign for the this classic as keepsake. protagonist, but somewhere in the jonathan horsley unsettling middle. chris dick

MAMELI

ith their 1991 debut album From Beyond, Massacre were late to the death metal party, but, boy, did they bring something tasty. Ultrabrutal and old-school to the max, just as death metal was getting all technical and highbrow, these guys dragged it kicking and screaming back down into the gutter. Featuring ex-Death members Rick Rozz, Terry From Beyond Butler and Bill Andrews alongside ear ache ( 19 9 1) vocalist Kam Lee, From Beyond can be viewed as a reaction–as Autopsy arguably were–against the progression that the clique fronted by Chuck Schuldiner had introduced to the genre. The inclusion of vintage Death nugget “Corpse Grinder” just rubbed salt into the wound. But let’s not forget that Massacre existed before Rozz, Butler and Andrews joined Death, and if they’d managed to actually release something prior to throwing their lot in with Chuck, maybe his shadow wouldn’t loom quite so large. Any way you slice it, though, From Beyond is killer; guttural vocals–done without effects, the sleeve notes warn us–scything guitar and train-wreck tempos, all dished out with skull-fucking savagery to no logical end. Massacre soon suffered their own identity crisis–see 1996’s aggro/groove/sub-Pantera disaster Promise–but nobullshit death metal doesn’t get much better than this. greg moffitt

Massacre

Hate Eternal I, Monarch e a r a c he (2 0 0 5 )

It is a bit ironic that the first line Erik Rutan roars on I, Monarch is “I am duality”–although the guitarist/ vocalist had already parted ways with Morbid Angel ahead of 2002’s King of All Kings, this is the first Hate Eternal record where it feels as if Rutan has the distance necessary to offer a singular death metal vision, rather than a über-brutal counterpoint to his legendary associates’ intricate alchemies. That’s not to say the St. Petersburg, FL power trio traded brutality for some crimson and clover-esque croon and sway, of course–Derek Roddy remains behind the kit on this fucker, after all–but there is a didgeridoo player credited in the liner notes, as well as a much-expanded atmospheric palette adding hitherto unrealized depth to the proceedings. A sense of Rutan’s expanded ambition and potential permeates I, Monarch from the first note to the last, and the glimmers of future triumphs are visible here. This time out, Hate Eternal don’t just hit listeners in the face with a sledgehammer for 45 minutes–although that clearly is a specialty. Rather, Rutan lets his malignant ferocity flower, and by doing so delivers a far more comprehensive beating. shawn macomber

Deceased

Fearless Undead Machines rel a pse (1997 )

If a world full of reanimated corpses never manifests, then all our beloved filmic and musical grotesqueries are truly just entertainment. If, however, cemeteries ever do unleash our ravenous buried back into our quiet communities, surely mad King Fowley will be venerated as some kind of misunderstood Paul Revere of the Dead. Hardly a moment of Deceased’s lengthy third album passes without Fowley ranting his graphic admonitions against complacency in the face of certain zombie infestation. Of course, if all Deceased offered was shameless Romero worship, Fearless Undead Machines never would have gnawed its way to such a strong position on this particular list. “The Silent Creature” opens proceedings with a scintillating riff, and cracks open at the five-minute mark to let loose an arena-sized solo on unsuspecting ears. Amidst the wanton multi-sectional destruction, Deceased offer ’tweentrack breathers (“Contamination,” “From the Ground They Came”) that expand the concept beyond mere drunk-thrashing fascination. Not that much of this album veers wide from ruling rotting faces, but the truly great moments (spilling often from the back half of the album) transcend the straight death attack one expects from such a rigid narrative structure. daniel lake

MY TOP 5 JAMES

MURPHY

ex-Death/ ex-Obituary Death, Scream Bloody Gore Atheist, Piece of Time Entombed, Left Hand Path Dismember, Like an Ever Flowing Stream Darkthrone, Soulside Journey

Death

Spiritual Healing co mb at ( 19 9 0 )

ome albums are more important when analyzed anthropologically from a distance. Sure, it’s apparent (now) that Spiritual Healing is a transitional album, bridging the absolute death metal supremacy of Leprosy to the forward-thinking tech-prog genius of Human, but back then it was more divisive. Elements of both are there: the production and effects of one, the evolving riffing of the other. Fitting, then, that it was the end of the Ed Repka cover era for the band. A new complexity was hammered into the proto-death metal that Chuck Schuldiner forged in the late ’80s–sophisticated key changes, modality, labyrinthine arrangement, but all still awkwardly married to the tabloid lyrics (cocaine-addicted babies! Religious stupidity! Genetic tampering! Mass murder hysteria!) inherited from the thrash scene. Recruited was James Murphy, who lends his trademark melodic solos, definite high points on the album, which fit Schuldiner’s pedal pointbrand of shredding perfectly. Dante wrote of one of the greatest sins, “But because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth,” yet we find that sometimes the “inbetween” albums aren’t just fence-sitting missing links, but legitimate in their own right. matthew widener

Deathevokation The Chalice of Ages xt r eem ( 20 0 7)

MY TOP 5 NIKLAS

SUNDIN

Dark Tranquillity Morbid Angel, Altars of Madness

Dark Tranquillity The Gallery

Bolt Thrower, Realm of Chaos Repugnant, Epitome of Darkness Entombed, Left Hand Path Athiest, Piece of Time

os mo s e p ro d u c ti o n s (1 9 9 5 )

It goes without saying that 1995 was a watershed year for Gothenburg, Sweden’s melodic death metal pioneers, but for all the attention At the Gates and In Flames continue to receive, it’s very important to not overlook the contributions of Dark Tranquillity, more specifically their second album. They might not be as big a name today as In Flames, who continue to distance themselves from their melodeath roots, but in 1995, The Gallery was a lot more fully realized than The Jester Race, the songwriting a lot more refined. And it remains a revelation to this day.

On one hand, there are the songs that fit into the prototypical melodic death template, combining ferocity and melody impeccably (“Midway Through Infinity”), but on the other hand are much bolder moments, such as the cleanly sung vocals on the title track, the ornate touches on “Lethe” and the progressive flourishes of “Punish My Heaven.” With charismatic vocalist Mikael Stanne contributing thoughtful lyrics, The Gallery feels like the work of grown-ups in a genre dominated by young prodigies. adrien begrand

Malevolent Creation The Ten Commandments

This may be treading perilously r o ad r u n n er [1991] close to fantasy sports league territory, P u l l i n g u p stakes from their but if you’ve ever wondered what Nehometown of Buffalo, NY, Malevocroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious– lent Creation migrated to Florida in or, better yet, the grand apotheosis 1987 just as the death metal tidal wave Heartwork–might have sounded like was about to crest. A couple demos if Paradise Lost’s Greg Mackintosh and a record deal with Roadrunner had been recruited to join Carcass brought The Ten Commandments to instead of Michael Amott, Deathlongbox racks worldwide by April of tevokation’s 2007 debut full-length 1991. Although Malevolent Creation’s offers something of a glimpse at that brand of death metal had deep roots in glorious alternate reality. The Chalice Bay Area thrash, the band’s choice of of Ages finds a band mastering the four Dan Seagrave cover art, Morrisound death metal magics–celestial atmoproduction (Scott Burns), Florida zip spherics, funereal doom, mid-tempo code and strategically placed blast groove and straight-up frenetic pumbeats ensured that death metallers meling–while summoning forth a gobbling up Earache releases would lithe, ferocious behemoth that stands take notice. in stark contrast to the predictable, Admission price got you 10 (coinmeandering platypus far too many of cidence? I think not) tracks chock full the scene’s heroes have lazily allowed of chugging guitar hooks and choruses themselves to devolve into. led by Tampa’s premier fu manchu Along the way, Deathevokation enthusiast, Brett Hoffmann, whose prove that embracing old-school raspy, bloodshot sermon purity need not require (think Altars-era David a band to shun progress. MY TOP 5 Vincent with much less In a perfect world, would restraint) prized vocal legions be following GÖTZ dynamics over the indeDeathevokation’s lushly cipherable blur of many detailed map into the of his guttural contemextreme metal future? Deathevokation poraries. Alongside Yes. Alas, the band reParadise Lost, albums by Roadrunner mains criminally underGothic labelmates Deicide, Sarated, and languishes in a Massacre, dus, early Pestilence and relative anonymity that From Beyond late ’80s Sepultura, Ten any and all whom drink Commandments managdeeply from this Chalice Autopsy, Mental Funeral es to straddle the death/ even once will quickly thrash divide with enough recognize as an unacceptAsphyx, dynamics to sidestep purable injustice. It is now On the Wings of ists from both camps. Inferno up to the Decibel readscott koerber ers’ vanguard to rectify… Morbid Angel, shawn macomber Altars of Madness

VOGELSANG

Convulse

World Without God thra sh (1991)

y the time Finns Convulse released debut album World Without God on Thrash Records in summer of ’91, the world was already overlorded by a select few. That’s not to say Convulse couldn’t have reached a wider audience if, for instance, they were from Stockholm and not Nokia–’cause back then Finland may’ve well been Fiji–but there was only so much room in the proverbial cauldron for brutal, rough-guy death. True, underground punters knew enough about Amorphis, Purtenance, Demigod, Funebre and Xysma, but the Finnish scene was, for all intents and purposes, relegated to (import catalog) footnote status by virtue of geography and label interest. That doesn’t diminish the power of World Without God, however. Jammed with bottom-heavy, jagged prongs of death, Convulse’s first captivates on power and mystique. Written exclusively by guitarist/ vocalist Rami Jämsä, World Without God hosts dirty ditties like “Putrid Intercourse,” “Godless Truth” and the uncompromising title track. Long sought after by collectors, but faithfully restored and reissued by Relapse in 2010, there’s no reason not to have Convulse on the rack or hard drive. chris dick

Arsis

Demigod

w i llo w t i p ( 20 0 4)

d r o w n ed pr o d u ct ion s (1992 )

A Celebration of Guilt

Slumber of Sullen Eyes

Here’s Cosmo Lee on A CelebraIt’s pretty cool that Finnish death tion of Guilt from our Top 100 Greatmetal titans Demigod had the vision est Metal Albums of the Decade special: to look beyond the genre boomtowns “It is, quite simply, one of the finest of Stockholm and Gothenburg and tomelodic death metal albums ever wards American East Coast bands for made.” Hear, hear. And what makes inspiration. Demigod sounded nothArsis’ debut full-length especially ing like their Nordic peers, drawing magical is that it’s also an exquisite from a zero-light atmosphere similar specimen of technical death metal, a to that of early Immolation and Infalse lead that the Virginia-based band cantation, and playing the genre deadchased on their more polished–but on. Slumber is a definitive death metal considerably less arresting–followrecord; it is 100 percent DM. up work. On A Celebration Yes, there are a few of Guilt, though, the mix curveballs: a Sleepy Hollow/ of harmonic elements, Van Helsing-style keyboard MY TOP 5 balls-out double bass and intro that sorta reprises JIM furious riffing was a beacon itself, like in the downtempo swagger of “Tears to a subgenre still lazily cribbing notes from the of God.” But otherwise, evArsis Gothenburg sound. erything is pitched straight Dissection, No one approached the down the line. The speed Storm of the keen balance of “light” and and technicality is unexLights Bane/The “dark” as well as the classic ceptional. And that’s OK. Somberlain lineup of vocalist/guitarSongs such as “As I Behold Carcass, ist/bassist James Malone I Despise” become excepHeartwork and drummer Michael tional through Demigod’s Van Dyne, whose laser unwavering conviction. God Dethroned, focus on arrangements Slumber is full of dark, Bloody Blasphemy gave A Celebration of Guilt haunting hooks; it sounds (and its companion EP awesome and raw, guitar Dismember, A Diamond for Disease) a melodies snaking their Pieces way past Esa Lindén’s real “lived-in” quality. Raw The Crown, woeurghhh growl. Fuck production and Malone’s Deathrace King knows what they’re singsuitably gnarly vocals add a third dimension–black ing about–the lyric sheet metal (“Dust and Guilt”)–to the reads a bit like Dante taking notes on mix, and the maneuvering between a fever dream, and the cover has a “movements” within each of the guy seated in the lotus position with songs was so delicate that a NYC balsome whacked-out stuff coming out let troupe choreographed a show with of his eyes. All you’ll hear is darkness. Arsis as the soundtrack. Malone’s sojonathan horsley los on “Wholly Night” are an obvious high point, but really, it’s all crucial. nick green

MALONE

Akercocke Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone E a r a c he (2 0 0 5 )

Like the titular edifice in House of Leaves or any number of Terry Pratchett’s inventions, Akercocke’s fourth album feels way bigger on the inside than common sense says it has any business being. Part of Words’ unnatural expansiveness comes from the London-based, blackened progressive death metal quartet’s capacity for piling on memorable moments–starting with the chorded pinch harmonics that mark the first

transition in opener “Verdelet.” As with If history were different, longstandmuch of what sets both band and album ing death metallers Immolation would apart, it’s a move liberated from the forhave a) crafted more infernal death for est of conventional gestures and tweaked Roadrunner, and b) approved of the origijust enough to seem newly delivered by nal cover for debut album Dawn of PossesSatan himself en route from Sirius B. sion. Well, the New Yorkers were dropped That Matt Wilcock and Jason Menfrom the label for perceived workrate readonça revel in cooking up guitar parts sons, and Dawn of Possession’s original art with no perceptible antecedents in our can be seen (in embarrassing detail) on universe or any other, as on 10-minutethe Repulse Records compilation Stepplus epic “Shelter From the Sand,” only ping on Angels… Before Dawn. adds to the self-produced alBut these “in the air” factors never prohibited Imbum’s multidimensional almolation’s first long-player lure. Same for Mendonça’s MY TOP 5 from ruling the death metal aptitude for deploying all BAND manner of growls, shrieks landscape like a subterranean and howls–not to mention king. Tracks like “Internal Decadence,” “After My enough clean voice variations Immolation to cover a couple celestial Prayers” and closer “ImmolaPossessed, Coachellas. But given Akertion” possess a frightful pace and Seven Churches cocke’s unflagging insistence scarier temperament thanks to on broaching new realities the feverish fretboard work of Death, Scream Bloody Gore and the spectacular results note-slayers Rob Vigna/Tom it yields, the weirdest thing Wilkinson and Craig SmilowsMorbid Angel, about this consummately ki’s hellhammer drums. FrontAltars of strange document is that man/bassist Ross Dolan is also Madness nobody’s reissued it on vinyl. of note, his anti-Christian Deicide, Deicide rod smith roars summoned from the Autopsy, darkest depths. Severed Survival

Immolation

Dawn of Possession r o ad r u n n er ( 1991)

CONSENSUS

If there’s a downside, it’s the drum production–hilariously likened to “dribbling basketballs” by label insiders and journalists alike–of famous knobtwiddler Harris Johns. Immolation wouldn’t hit their ordered chaos-like stride until mid-’90s jewel Here in After, but Dawn of Possession remains a signature sound in an ocean of disheartening similitude. Then and now. chris dick

t is difficult to deny the novelty element of any record that not only trades the usual lyrical eviscerations and blasphemies for lines like “And there, I, a hen, was lost” and “Hey, tiny wench / My perpetual serf / Put stew in a pot / Bring water for the guest,” but also leads teenage metalheads to spend lunch periods parsing the details of a 19th century Finnish epic poem. Yet despite the implausibly apropos folk flourishes and determined rejection of genre orthodoxy, Tales From the Thousand Lakes became– Tales From the contra those who doubt the sophistication Thousand Lakes of extreme music enthusiasts’ palates–an r elapse ( 19 9 4) instant death metal classic. The record may not draw from the same primal wellspring Deicide or Morbid Angel plumbed, but the band’s cleverly calibrated amalgamation of primal aural violence and foreboding progressive rock proved equally powerful. Whether the album endures as long as the folklore, legends and myths recounted in the Kalevala will not be determined in any of our lifetimes. Of this much, however, we can be certain: Somewhere in the upper reaches of the netherworld, Ukko wails on air guitar along to “The Castaway” as Zeus and Odin bang their heads. shawn macomber

Amorphis

Grave

Into the Grave

c e n tu ry m e d i a (1 9 9 1 )

or extreme metal anthropologists, it’s always good times to rewind the tape and see who did what when. Who first struck with a club? Who first stuck a nail in said club? Who first lit said nailed-club on fire and rammed it up their enemies’ backsides? Grave may be that old-school club-wielding/technology-upgrading/backside-plunging death unit

The Crown Deathrace King m e ta l bl a d e (2 0 0 0 )

While we can already predict an internet war brewing about whether Deathrace King is truly a death metal album or just a really ferocious thrash album, we’d like to preemptively implore y’all to stop your goddamned nitpicking! Can’t we all just get along? The Crown obviously knew how

MY TOP 5 OLA

LINDGREN Grave

Celtic Frost, Morbid Tales Pestilence, Consuming Impulse Autopsy, who struck first or–for goosed) vocals. Severed Survival the time–hit the hardInto the Grave took Carcass, est. It was these Swedish the chunky, sludgy Symphonies of DM legends’ debut that axework of Autopsy, Sickness truly pushed the genre Sepultura and other Immolation, forward into the most Swedish contempoDawn of Possession primal and simplistic raries (Dismember, Unleashed), then added expressions of gritty, groove-based brutality via way-the- a vanguardist musicianship that fuck-detuned guitars (hello, “B”) brought urgency and songwritand super guttural (non-studio ing chops to their avalanche of

to open their arms to different sorts of sounds, so as to keep things interesting for themselves after four albums (two were issued under their original moniker, Crown of Thorns) and inadvertently move the genre into areas only few had flirted with previously. It starts with Janne Saarenpää’s drums, which sound like some wisenheimer lit a match after pouring gasoline on a Chinese fireworks warehouse. It continues with Johan Lindstrand doing his imitation of a banshee choking on sawdust and chemical coolants, and riffs that combined speed, brutality, hooky choruses and middle eights more memorable than 90 percent of death metal written since. The riffs and refrains in “Deathexplosion” and “Executioner–Slayer of the Light” are still ingrained in brains some 12 years down the line, and if you haven’t pissed your neighbors off with 3 a.m. airings of “Rebel Angel,” you haven’t lived. kevin stewart-panko

Unanimated Ancient God of Evil No F ashi o n ( 19 9 5)

Unanimated never really got their respective due by scenesters outside of Sweden–likely because stateside distribution for debut album In the Forest of the Dreaming Dead sucked and follow-up Ancient God of Evil had a ludicrous import price tag–but inside the group’s home-

chunky, sludgy minimalism. They nailed it right out of the gate with this debut, and have yet to top it. Fan favorites such as the cacophonous album opener “Deformed” and the doom-and-gloom Slayeresque “Extremely Rotten Flesh” have maintained their position in live shows for over two decades for good reason. shawn bosler

land, they’re regarded highly. They’re a musicians’ band, looked up to and respected by members of the death metal community. Example: Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt once considered Unanimated’s musical prowess as inspirational while writing and recording Hall of Fame record Orchid. As for how Unanimated ended up on this very list, well, the Swedes–like fellow genre fence-sitters Dissection– were never truly black metal. More death metal with evil intentions. And Ancient God of Evil is one hell of a death metal full-length. Far more succinct and powerful than its predecessor–though “Fire Storm” remains clutch–Unanimated summoned the saturnine spirit of Dissection’s The Somberlain and the boogie of Entombed’s Wolverine Blues to form an unprecedented sound so comfortable in its own tremolo/groove riff (dead) skin, it sneaks up on the reward circuit of the brain and stays there. Tracks like “Eye of the Greyhound,” “Dead Calm,” “Die Alone” and the bisecting instrumental “Mireille” stamped Ancient God of Evil as superlative. chris dick

Following the mighty Left Hand Path wasn’t going to be easy for the Swedish gods of death. Where the Entombed debut had plenty of time to be perfected over a series of demos and several years (1988-1990), Clandestine was a fresher, more quickly conceived batch of songs. And it easily matches the debut when it comes to memorable mindblower riffs (tons and tons of them) and the patented Sunlight Studio Guitar Tone. If there’s one thing to lament about Clandestine, it’s drummer Nicke Andersson’s Clandestine vocal performance (it was he, not the credEa ra c he (1991) ited Johnny Dordevic, responsible for all the yelling). Andersson is beyond reproach when it comes to drumming and songwriting, though. His percussive performance on this album is top-tier stuff, whereas his too-forced vocals here merely do the trick. Had Nirvana 2002 throat blower Orvar Säfström been on the album instead, as he was on their Crawl EP, Clandestine might very well have been the best death metal album of all time. But hey, it’s still one of the best. The sticker on the cover of Left Hand Path still applies here: Crushing Guitars, Mass Death. To which we’ll add a big Fuck Yes. jeff wagner

Asphyx The Rack

C e ntu r y Me d i a (1 9 9 1 )

Entombed

N o s t a l g i a a p o l o g i a be damned–The Rack is forever the album that was overlooked by most, on the year of what could be defined as the summit of the golden age of death metal. 1991 was certainly crowded MY TOP 5 (check the dates on this BOB list!), and a leather jacket has only so much pocket room for cassettes, I unAsphyx derstand, but that winter Venom, was made for Martin Welcome to Hell van Drunen’s panicked howls–like Pavarotti, Possessed, Seven Churches a man whose throat was Deicide have never strayed destined for the music he Death, Scream from their single-issue crusade found. Bloody Gore against Christianity, except for Which is why the recent Necrophagia, that one time when Glen Benrenaissance for The Rack is Season ton went off-message and they so rewarding. Its immatuof the Dead ended up with a death metal alrity and sloppiness pays Slaughter, bum about his divorce, which was dividends on organicism, Strappado kind of weird. And yet, because the way Asphyx–undeniof their satanic fundamentalism, ably European, yet with they often get overlooked when notes of Autopsy–knew pop-cultural importance is being dished out. how to stretch a beat, to sink their This is an outrage: All of us who appreciate structure into the sludge of their own kitchen sink iconoclasm genuflect before aldown-tuned muck. Past the requisite bums such as their eponymous debut and the instrumental intro, and the rare exoff-kilter complexity of its follow-up, Legion. plosion of riff in “Vermin,” the true Legion When Legion came together, Deicide soul of the album collects like sediRo ad r u n n er ( 19 9 2) were the most notorious band on the planet ment: the grooved trills, the expansive for a number of reasons, most of them condistortion, the plodding bass fart. Not cerning what went on behind Benton’s branded forehead, what came out of his mouth, the best, or even groundbreaking, it suicidal declarations, the death threats from animal rights groups, etc. Purely on isn’t until the chromatic step-down DM terms, they were notorious for a seditious, unholy sound, juiced-up to fervor tremolo riff and desperate bellowing on the anti-Redemption rationale of The Omen. Others pushed the genre further, on the final song “The Rack” that we but none matched Deicide in becoming shorthand for metal’s indelible contract understand: like its namesake, this pawith “The Devil.” Legion is 28 minutes of unrelenting malevolence, of anti-Hymns tient album actually sounds tortured. in awkward meters that sound as wrong and warped as a child looks when she spiderA rare and good thing. matthew walks through the house. jonathan horsley widener

BAGCHUS

Deicide

In Flames

The Jester Race Nu clear Blast (1996)

Along with At the Gates’ Slaughter of the Soul, In Flames’ second album is regarded as a seminal melodic death metal record, but what’s so interesting about it is just how innocuously it starts. Instead of kicking things off with a face-ripping opening track like Slaughter’s immortal “Blinded by Fear,” The Jester Race begins with an acoustic-tinged waltz (“Moonshield”) and an instrumental (“The Jester’s Dance”). In fact, it’s not until you’re well into Side One that the album finally gets things in gear on “Graveland,” but even then it’s never quite full-throttle. Which, in In Flames’ case, is a very good thing. Less about full-on aggression and a lot more about exploring the subtler side of melodic death metal, The Jester Race sees guitarists Jesper Strömblad and Glenn Ljungström achieving a masterful marriage between two seemingly disparate sides. While rhythm riffs are rooted in the harsher, extreme sounds of Swedish death metal, melodies heavily derived from 1980s Helloween contrast brilliantly, kicking off an enthralling, continual, surprisingly graceful tugof-war between darkness and light. adrien begrand

Unleashed Where No Life Dwells

C e ntu r y Me d i a (1 9 9 1 )

After splitting from pre-Entombed outfit Nihilist in ’89, bassist Johnny Hedlund quickly formed Unleashed as a subtle middle finger to his former colleagues in death. Whereas Entombed, Dismember and other Stockholmites owned the “Sunlight Sound” and Autopsy/Repulsion-inspired lyrics/aesthetic, Hedlund’s new outfit–with drummer Anders Schultz, guitarists Fredrik Lindgren and Tomas Olsson–had a different focus. After two lauded demos and one signature EP (And the Laughter Has Died…), then-nascent Century Media issued Unleashed’s debut full-length Where No Life Dwells. Structured like Motörhead rather than Autopsy– though the influence is readily apparent on hit single “Before the Creation of Time”–the Swedes veered from the pack by writing hook-laden songs rather than horror-filled features. And, from a production standpoint, had Waldemar Sorychta twiddle the knobs in Germany rather than go-to guy Tomas Skogsberg in Sweden. With refined tunes–opener “Dead Forever,” “If They Had Eyes,” “Into Glory Ride” and “Unleashed” are unsung classics–Sorychta’s crisp production, Hedlund’s Vikingthemed lyrics and Axel Hermann’s eerie ice age (the silver ink overlay is ace!) cover, Where No Life Dwells enthralled instantly. Whereas the 2001 reissue includes the Laughter EP, the original will always be cult. Seek it or be destroyed by the creature from the sea! chris dick

Death Symbolic

R oa drunner (1995 )

Which Death record most successfully straightens your sack-hair (ladies, you can choose your preferred feminine equivalent) depends heavily on your Evil Chuck entry point and personal extreme music preferences. (A lazier scribe would have shoehorned “individual thought patterns” into that last sentence, but for

such obvious laurel-resting you’ll have to seek elsewhere, low-expectation-having bitches.) Each extraordinary version of Chuck Schuldiner’s brutal baby conjured its own special magic, and Symbolic is certainly no exception. Each attentiongrabbing riff births another, then another, while unchecked solos raise the stakes and smooth the transitions. The album’s titular opener connects Symbolic to its elder siblings, while Bobby Koelble’s fabulous fretwork pairs perfectly with Schuldiner’s own jagged attack to scrawl an exciting new path forward. Sole fellow Death veteran Gene Hoglan terrorizes the drum kit in predictably fine form, and Chuck’s vocals still scour the brain like a roll of industrial-grade steel wool being fed from eardrum to eardrum. This far along the charmed Death continuum, cracks in the craftsmanship are imagined or outright invented by critics. Too soon, we would have to bid farewell to the project and its mastermind, but Symbolic rises as a certain equal among its brethren, and joins them in their fatherly gaze over all lesser achievements. daniel lake

Dissection just may be the most black metal-sounding troglodyte from this list. And maybe the most “heavy metal”-sounding, too. This is in large parts due to band leader Jon Nödtveidt’s successful conjuring of dark vibes via his heavy emphasis on melodic dual-guitar harmonies and mythicsounding tremolo runs. This undeniable classic really does keep melody front-and-center, often coming off like Iron Maiden taking a stab at detuned deThe Somberlain struction. In allegiance to old-school metal, the album features some gorgeous classical N o Fa shion (1993) guitar intros à la Metallica’s “Battery” and “Fight Fire With Fire,” and plenty of made-for-the-arena swaying power chord jaunts. One of the sickest jams, “The Grief Prophecy/Shadows Over a Lost Kingdom” runs the spectrum between doomy guitar work (Candlemass-esque), At the Gates-styled frenetic melodic flair (Dissection were from–and associated with–the Gothenburg sound, after all) and sludgy Satan-fawning chunky bits. As high as this album stands–as well as the follow-up Storm of the Light’s Bane–the band’s legacy will always be mired in shadow due to Nödtveidt’s unfortunate suicide and murderous hate-crime prison stint. shawn bosler

Dissection

Opeth Orchid

Can d leli ght (1995 )

Putting a folk interlude in a metal song is one thing. Dropping multiple Lothlóriens in multiple Hells is quite another. But it’s not just the surreal juxtapositions of tenderness and fury that give Opeth’s first album its enduring luster, nor the fusion of death and black metal tropes with progressive rock’s ambitious structures–though all of the above figured in making Orchid exactly the world-changing chimera mid-’90s metal needed. Young as fuck and signed to a label deal they never expected to get, the band threw themselves into the Unisound sessions hard enough to perform beyond their normal capacity–kinda like action movie heroes at the moment they defeat whatever boss–only the band maintained that bravura focus for a couple weeks. Mikael Åkerfeldt and Peter Lindgren especially stand out, their playing often suggesting that they and/ or their guitars are about to burn through to China. Meanwhile, drummer Anders Nordin, bassist Johan DeFarfalla and co-producer/engineer Dan Swanö rise to the occasion as bravely as any of John Coltrane’s associates ever did–more in Nordin’s case, as his solo piano work on instrumental “Silhouette” partakes of the same urgency that drives the rest of the album. rod smith

MY TOP 5 PAUL

MAZZIOTTA

diSEMBOWELMENT Death, Leprosy Morbid Angel, Altars of Madness

diSEMBOWELMENT Transcendence Into the Peripheral R e l a p s e (1993)

Wh i l e m o s t doom-death metal of the era was content to revel in unabashed misery, diSEMBOWEL MENT’s moods swung much, much wider. Viciousness, beauty, torment and redemption–1993’s Transcendence Into the Peripheral is all of these things. Album opener “The Tree of Life and Death” quakes with some of the most ferocious death metal ever laid to tape, while the majestic pulsing of “Nightside of Eden” descends into pure hushed ambience. Masterful songwriting and painstaking arrangement blurs

Dying Fetus Destroy the Opposition R e l a p s e (2 0 0 0 )

Destroy the Opposition is arguably one of the most confrontational studio offerings in the annals of death metal. Complex, sub-nuclear riffing, roller coaster arpeggio spills, murderous builds, mammoth, imposing vocal grunts–it all comes together in an untouchable,

Autopsy, Mental Funeral Nile, Annihilation of the Wicked Immolation, Dawn of Possession

any perceived gaps, pushing the Aussie quartet’s blend of face-melting aggression and lethargic gloom into an orbit all its own. A cauldron of tolling bells, monk chants, lumbering death growls and manic-depressive tempos forego the mosh pit in favor of the candle-lit cave. Transcendence Into the Peripheral’s many tempers find perfect union in album closer “Cerulean Transience of All My Imagined Shores,” a fitting ending to an utterly transformative (nay, religious) hour-long voyage into death metal’s gloomiest depths. scott koerber

38-and-a-half-minute outpouring of audio terrorism due in no small part to the maniacal chemistry of guitarist/vocalist John Gallagher, bassist/vocalist Jason Netherton, guitarist Sparky Voyles and drummer Kevin Talley, (perhaps the most potent Dying Fetus lineup in their winding history of personnel changes). More political lyrically than their two previous outputs, the band’s sharp balance of breakneck pace fluctuations, technical precision (see “Pissing in the Mainstream”) and a hardcore/punkish delivery take the meaning of “extreme” to bold new frontiers. On Destroy the Opposition, breakdowns don’t just happen. They lunge at you with chest-caving severity, kick you in the throat, crush your dreams and leave you–cold, bleeding and alone– to mop up the pieces (“Born in Sodom,” “In Times of War,” “Justifiable Homicide” et al). Few records exude such sonic hostility. Bonus: “Praise the Lord (Opium of the Masses)” = one of the most punishing riffs to open a record ever. liz ciavarella-brenner

Bolt Thrower War Master Ear ache ( 19 9 1)

fter eating worlds on breakout long-player Realm of Chaos, war-obsessed Bolt Thrower returned with the career-defining War Master. Less grind-influenced than its predecessor, the Brits’ parlayed Barry Thomson and Gavin Ward’s penchant for thick tones/sick riffmanship and Andy Whale’s incessant double bass into an undeniably destructive force. Add Jo Bench’s “flabby” strings and Karl Willetts’ discernible bellow, and War Master emerges as a “mid”-tempo death metal standard. Whereas Realm of Chaos was about chaos and disorder–punctuated by the insanely good “World Eater”–Bolt Thrower’s third was about control, Colin Richardson’s standout/heavy-yet-clear production, and songs. From “Intro… Unleashed (Upon Mankind)” and “Profane Creation” to “Cenotaph” and “Rebirth of Humanity,” War Master’s deck is stacked with bona fide death metal hits. Even CD “bonus” track–an Earache incentive to purchase the CD over the LP/cassette at the dawn of format wars–“Destructive Infinity” marches like a dream-machine programmed for death. Although Bolt Thrower wouldn’t use Games Workshop for the gatefold cover, the Pete Knifton/Ian Cooke Conan-like battle scene–replete with missing right lower leg on the center warrior–and the stained glass logo ushered many a longhair into War Master’s forged steel maw. No filler, all killer, if there’s a gateway death metal album for neophytes looking to the past to understand the present, War Master is absolutely it. chris dick

Pestilence Consuming Impulse

Ro ad r u n n er ( 19 89 )

Nether lands natives Pestilence are another old-school outfit who cut their teeth and made their name as 1980s thrash made its gradual transformation into death. Their original MY TOP 5 demos–Dysentery and The PAUL Penance, both from ’87– sound a lot like Possessed and Schizophrenia-era Cynic/ Sepultura, and can readily ex-Death be fixed with the “thrash” Possessed, tag. Even their 1988 debut Seven album Malleus Maleficarum Churches is almost equal parts thrash Obituary, and death. But with the arSlowly We Rot rival of their second fulllength–1989’s Consuming n death metal, Focus was Deicide, Deicide Impulse–their dedication like the Beatles transito pure death metal became Carcass, tioning from Chuck clear. Symphonies Berry covers to Technicolor The tempos are still of Sickness cloudscapes. Ask any Florida thrashy–no blast beats Death, death metal band what they here–but from start to Scream finish, it’s borderline DM were listening to in the midBloody Gore perfection. From the sec’90s, and they’d almost cerond “Dehydrated” smashes tainly answer Cynic. Focus through the speakers until was misunderstood in its time, much “Reduced to Ashes” torches all in its like Atheist’s Unquestionable Presence. wake, Consuming Impulse slams down The album now stands as one of the sick riff after sick riff, and some of the most brutally brilliant breakfirst to blend virtuosity into a genre Focus downs you’ll ever hear. Extra props known more for the slow and steady. Ro a d ru n n e r (1 9 9 3 ) to frontman Martin van Drunen– Yet it’s kind of hard to tag this alwhose acidic style later (dis)graced bum as death metal in the sense that it’s life-affirming rather than a both Asphyx and Hail of Bullets– colossal downer. Focus seems to speak of the limitless possibilities of because the man’s quite simply an life and music, rather than violent demise. It has influenced an entire animal, his gut-wrenching gnarl permanently on the edge of total psychogeneration of tech-death wunderkinds that began popping up in the sis. Pestilence later went prog-metal 2000s, from the Faceless to Decrepit Birth to–no big surprise–Veil mad and managed to make it convincof Maya. You could trace much of the Sumerian sound to this record. ing, but they’ve never come close to Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert reformed Cynic in 2006; even without such an all-out assault on the senses. the welcome comeback, Focus would loom large. justin m. norton greg moffitt

MASVIDAL

Cynic

Cannibal Corpse The Bleeding Metal Blad e ( 1994 )

Th e r e ’ s a chunky-fluid quality about the best of Cannibal Corpse, like a good salsa or a vat of entrails not entirely digested by a particularly nasty acid. Just when you start to think the mixture has achieved a stable homogeneity, some discernible nugget of tomato or intestinal coil bobs to the surface. Cannibal Corpse stew death metal’s meat, bones and sweetbreads into a bubbly genre quintessence: hyper speeds, brutal growls, and album art that just won’t quit frightening and enraging the PMRC faithful. Guitarists Rob Barrett and Jack Owen rip through the murky thrashitude of Cannibal classics like “Force Fed Broken Glass,” “She Was Asking for It” and “Fucked With a Knife,” and occasional solos explode from the bath of human chum while Chris Barnes pukes his burned-blood vocals into every gristly gorefest. But The Bleeding’s genius mix balances these oft-celebrated elements with Alex Webster’s rubbery bass thunder. It’s down there in the subterranean recesses of the musical psyche where Cannibal’s revelatory dark heart lives, and much of the album’s viscid power rises from those deep shadows-grownflesh. daniel lake

Incantation

Dissection

R e l a p s e (1 9 9 2 )

N uc l ea r B l a st (1995)

Onward to Golgotha

Storm of the Light’s Bane

We all have those life-changing Widely considered more black memories: First bowl smoked in the than death, Storm of the Light’s Bane 7-Eleven parking lot, first tongue kiss in from Sweden’s Dissection remains the roller rink arcade, first time hordes ominously imperial, calculative and allof blood-covered demons poured from consuming in sound, mind and spirit the earth, peeled back your skull cap and nearly two decades since its release. puked inside. The latter beFeaturing eight hymns of ing what happened the first unholy elegance, the retime–with headphones cord’s beauty lies its seamMY TOP 5 on!–this writer heard less blend of cold blasting JOHN Onward to Golgotha (on casbrutality, epic melodies sette). and dark, elegiac lyrics. Alongside New York All led by the comIncantation brethren Immolation Possessed, and Suffocation, IncantaSeven Churches tion–and especially this Death, Scream face-melting debut–led G l e n B e n t o n has Bloody Gore the pack and redefined what changed into the likeable DM brutality meant in the elder statesmen of death Autopsy, Shitfun early ’90s. Like their NY metal, a motorcycle-riding Necrophagia, contemporaries, IncantaBigfoot enthusiast who’s Season tion recited from the sonic never short of a quip. It’s of the Dead grimoire made famous by easy to forget that BenDeath Strike, Azagthoth and Vincent– ton was once a squirrelFuckin’ Death hellspawn growls and lowshooting, flesh-burning, tuned, chthonic axe-work blaspheming maniac from using extreme dissonance and bludFlorida who seemed to take all the Satan geoning heaviness to channel intershit seriously. He practically threatened dimensional evils. But somehow Onradio evangelist Bob Larson’s life on the ward forged a (left hand) path even phone, made suicidal threats, and was more nefarious. a fixture on “metal is dangerous” news In part, this all-consuming evil vibe specials. is due to the album’s hazy (sometimes Years later, we know it was a ruse, but too muddy) production, but the onDeicide remains a time capsule to when slaught of foul and incorruptible riffs Benton was genuinely threatening. Of piled on at constantly changing tempo all their records, Deicide seethes with the patterns is the secret, and the true dark most malice: “Dead by Dawn” sounds as magic to this album’s brilliance: All angry as it did 20-plus years ago, and the within one song, “Golgotha” belches sample of cult leader Jim Jones during a blast beats, mid-tempo chugs, thrash mass suicide on “Lunatic of God’s Crerhythms, slow guitars atop fast drums, ation” is still chilling. Benton sounds like fast guitars atop slow ones. Blissfully it Linda Blair possessed by a demon, flying burns, and you’re never quite sure what pea soup and all. The Hoffman brothhit you. shawn bosler ers form a guitar tag team as effective

MCENTEE

manding rasp and palpable hostility of founding vocalist/lead guitarist Jon Nödtveidt, Storm sears ears with an instant coldness upon the opening crescendo of “At the Fathomless Depths.” The acoustic interludes of “Night’s Blood” and its subsequent machine gun blasts; the diminished chords of “Unhallowed,” with its grandiose black mass undertones and sweeping guitar leads; the dismal piano work of “No Dreams Breed in Breathless Sleep”–it all translates into an irreverent hailstorm of classy, orchestrated greatness. Largely traditional song structures make Dissection’s bestial odes all the more infectious, while the pristine but icy Dan Swanö production and now iconic Necrolord cover art adds an extra level of menace to the proceedings. That the once-incarcerated Nödtveidt would take his own life–a reportedly ritualistic suicide by gunshot within a circle of lit candles, the Liber Azerate by his side, debatably augmented the record’s intrinsic darkness to later-generation discoverers. Regardless, Storm of the Light’s Bane is a timeless tradition. liz ciavarella-brenner

as the WWE legends the Wild Samoans. Benton may regret the seared upsidedown cross on his forehead, but he’ll never disown this album, a record that retains the power to terrify true believers and move evildoers. Drink the wine– they’ll be here with flamethrowers. justin m. norton

Deicide Deicide

Morbid Angel

Blessed Are the Sick Ear ache ( 1991)

F e e d b a c k c h a o s and baby screams–this is how we start, and the blasphemous journey only gets weirder and bolder, as if codifying stray callow evil into bloated, unholy religion. “Fall From Grace” drives forward with a trademark Pete Sandoval blast (early-’90s, no one was more precise–the subject of many a hesher debate) into the chopper-rotor double kick “whores long for my flesh” refrain. Aaand... we’re sold. As the Jean Delville album cover illustrates, Satanism can be so refined and wolfish. Morbid Angel seat us in the lush parlor of Satan, where we’re ensorcelled by jangling odd-time signatures, drum pyro, throaty whispers, exotic chords and all manner of onanistic theatrics. I won’t break the party line and say this is as good as their debut, but this is them having debauched fun, where every riff seems weighed with ornament, and songs get moody instrumental frontispieces. Each song is so motley in its parts (even David Vincent’s vocals change) with blistering blasts (“Rebel Lands”), double-kick chug (“Day of Suffering”) and hip-swagger boogie (“The Ancient Ones,” for the finest in death metal dance!), it’s impossible to stop listening; there’s always that next strange part you just have to hear. matthew widener

Ro ad r u n n er ( 19 9 0 )

Autopsy

Carcass

Severed Survival P e a c e vi l l e (1 9 8 9 )

MY TOP 5

As heavy as a mortuary slab and SHANE with more twisted metal than a 16-car pile-up on Interstate 5, Severed Survival is total death and total metal. Tales Napalm Death of disembowelment (“Disembowel”) Possessed, and embalmment (“Embalmed”) are Seven Churches incomprehensibly spewed out by exDeath drummer Chris Reifert, while Morbid Angel, the three-man frontline of Danny Altars of Madness Harmony Corruption Coralles, Eric Cutler and Steve DiEntombed, Ea ra c he [ 19 9 0 ] Giorgio emits crushing low-end dread. Left Hand Path The sound is thick and spongy and utObituary, terly demented, and while follow-up t’s hard to believe that Napalm Death got Slowly We Rot Mental Funeral had plenty of the same attacked by the scene police for more or less Immolation, kind of dementia, its dry, garage-like abandoning grindcore for death metal on Dawn of recording put it in a much different Harmony Corruption, but even drummer Mick Possession sonic league than their deadly debut. Harris had his doubts: After this full-length Severed Survival’s audible insanhit shelves, Napalm’s longest-tenured member ity was matched by the original cover artwork, a cartoony-lookchecked out due to “musical differences.” To be fair, 1988’s ing dude being torn apart From Enslavement to Obliteration was recognized as an instant MY TOP 5 by fishhooks and weirdly classic and even charted (!) in the U.K., so the nuke-and-pave shaped blades. It was banned CHRIS attack of Harmony Corruption must’ve been a shock. Napalm by those too uptight to see Death traveling to Morrisound and embracing Florida death the humor in it all, resulting metal: That’s a little like Michael Jordan retiring from basin a tamer but no less interAutopsy esting second version (zomketball at his peak to try baseball, isn’t it? Repulsion, bie surgeons peering down But in terms of clarity of purpose, it’s the best Napalm Horrified at the wielder of the album Death record–and a very earnest and expressive foray into Possessed, cover in a cool patient’s-eyedeath metal, to boot. Backing vocals by John Tardy and Glen Seven view scenario). A young laChurches Benton on “Unfi t Earth” created an obvious pivot point, but bel called Peaceville Records Blasphemy, Barney Greenway came out of the gate swinging as a voice of took the band under its wing Fallen Angel of before the likes of Earache dissent with mature lyrics about dictators and corruptions Doom or Combat could ink them, on “The Chains That Bind Us” and “Suffer the Children.” and, remarkably, that same Slayer, Twenty-plus years later, Harmony Corruption remains a crucial Reign in Blood partnership–which began foundation for the hybridized death metal-grindcore approach with Severed Survival– Black of veteran bands like Phobia and, more amazingly, what Nacontinues to this day. Sabbath, palm Death are still doing today. nick green jeff wagner Black Sabbath

Napalm Death

REIFERT

EMBURY

Symphonies of Sickness Ear ache ( 19 8 9)

Prior to becoming one of death metal’s most revered and influential bands, Carcass pioneered and helped popularize grindcore. While their turgid and almost unlistenable 1988 debut Reek of Putrefaction is still very much of that genre, come the following year and the release of sophomore effort Symphonies of Sickness, the band had evolved into something of a hybrid beast, as their drift towards death metal really took hold. Although the band would later blast death metal’s boundaries apart, Symphonies is less about progression and more about simply doing what their debut failed to do–capturing their patent goregrind brutality in all its gruesome glory. Grindcore bands weren’t known for their chops, and in ’89, Carcass weren’t exactly the tightest act around. The unenviable task of somehow creating at least a semblance of order from the chaos they churned out therefore fell to producer Colin Richardson. He does a great job, giving glass-gargling vo-kills and the seething, visceral mass of mu-sick beneath a deadly, razor-sharp edge. Death metal was already associated with horror and gore, but Carcass made it an obsession, their explicit lyrics and shockingly-graphic album sleeves probing grim new extremes. greg moffitt

Atheist

Unquestionable Presence Ac tiv e (1991)

Death

When the Atheist fellas were engaged in the process of writing their 1991 masterstroke of technical death metal, they hit a snag. It quickly became evident that guitarists Kelly Shaefer and Rand Burkey were oftentimes at a loss as to their place

amid Steve Flynn’s octopus-armed, jazz/ Latin-influenced drumming and the late Roger Patterson’s busy bass lines. Hell, this is metal! Guitars are supposed to dominate! Guitars, guitars and more guitars, goddammit! But the nascent versions of unquestionable classics– see what we did there?–like “Mother Man,” “Your Life’s Retribution” and “Brains” already had enough going on, and two guitars’ worth of guitaring would just clutter the landscape. So, the key to complementing the already stellar skittishness of the riffs was the discovery of how to orchestrate, and learning the value of space and counterpart, which gave the left-handed axeslingers room to breathe and not worry about cramming 115 pounds of metal into a five-pound bag. Because of this, death metal paid witness to an astronomical leap in technicality, uniqueness and songwriting, with the second album by these irreverent Florida stoners leading the charge. kevin stewart-panko

Scream Bloody Gore C o m b at (1 9 8 7 )

In 1987, as new bands like Morbid Angel and Obituary were honing their sounds, Chuck Schuldiner would beat everyone in the nascent genre to the punch with Death’s seminal debut album. With 17-year-old Chris Reifert contributing on drums alongside Schuldiner, who handled guitar, bass and vocals, Death not only ushered in a new era of heavy metal, but did so sounding fully-formed, rather than merely a work in progress. Coming on the heels of such bands as Possessed and Bathory, Scream Bloody Gore is a natural progression from Seven Churches and The Return of the Darkness and Evil, with a strong thrash influence looming over much of the album. However, although the primal ferocity of this new sound called “death metal” is front and center, Schuldiner brought in a melodic sensibility that’s almost ingenious, as he offset his outstanding rhythm riffs with solos that were a lot more expressive than either Kerry King’s divebombs or Kirk Hammett’s noodling. That unholy marriage of extremity and intricacy, so brilliantly apparent on “Evil Dead,” “Zombie Ritual” and “Sacrificial,” would become a hallmark of Schuldiner’s, and he would continue to refine that formula for the rest of his tragically short life. adrien begrand

Obituary

Slowly We Rot R oa drunner (1989)

Wh e n J o h n and Donald–a.k.a. the Tardy brothers–were growing up, there was no Internet, no Facebook and no cell phones. You couldn’t copy that fancy tech-death lead by watching YouTube. What do you do? Start a band. Write your own songs. Play in the garage and annoy your parents until you’ve got

something special. Unlike today’s musicians–many jaded by overexposure and limitless, free listening–the Tardys turned their inexperience and desire into something memorable. Rather than copy, they found their own voice. Slowly We Rot is that voice. Not only that, it’s the earliest parts of a language that helped birth what we now consider death metal. Obituary flips off frivolous technicality and proves the power of the almighty hook and riff. Allen West’s whammy bar dives became a staple of the Obituary sound, and John Tardy’s voice is one that defines death metal. Producer Scott Burns, then just another knob-turner, became a key force in the Florida death metal scene. The lasting achievement of Slowly We Rot might be the title track, as compulsively listenable today as it was when the elder George Bush was president. Obituary continue to evolve and record, but their first album remains one of their most powerful and enduring statements. justin m. norton

Nile

Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka Relapse ( 19 98)

Although many bands from this list have a distinct individuality, methinks there isn’t another outfit in the DM stable that has a more singular, easily identifiable sound than Nile. Some may debate whether Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka is Nile’s “all-around best” album (Black Seeds of Vengeance or Annihilation of the Wicked?), but it was here that their signature highbrow Middle-Eastern pummeling was born. Much is made of Nile’s Great Pyramid stylization, but too often some of their finest attributes are overlooked. Catacombs set a new bar for unbridled technicality, uncompromising brutality and otherworldly epic atmospherics. Band mastermind Karl Sanders (guitar, vocals) took the Lovecraftian dissonant riffage found within Morbid Angel, added an old world sense of majesty to their creepy apocalypse a-comin’ soundscapes and gave the late ’90s DM scene a much-needed facelift. Check out “Stones of Sorrow,” which re-envisions Celtic Frost’s “Dawn of Meggido” with thunderous chug-chug-chug panoramas, or “Serpent Headed Mask,” which weds cosmic doom to spiraling serpentine tech-death. For utter heaviness and innovation alone, Catacombs is a goddamn motherfucker of an album. Fun fact: “Nephren-Ka” is actually a Cthulhu Mythos reference, not a blast beatdriven Egyptian history lesson. shawn bosler

Suffocation Efﬁgy of the Forgotten

Possessed Seven Churches C om bat (1985 )

R o a d r u n n e r (1 9 9 1 )

P o s s e s s e d’ s l e g e n d a r y and highly influential 1985 debut is not Despite Father Time chipping only widely cited as the first death away at the veneer of most artistic metal album, but fans, journalists and endeavors, there are some albums many of the Frisco outfit’s contempothat still sound just as life-affirming, raries hail them to this very day as the unique and vital after re-listening with true progenitors of the genre. Bassist/ a couple decades of experience and an vocalist Jeff Becerra has even gone so old-dude beer gut under your belt. The far as to claim coining the term “death debut from these Long Islanders remetal” itself. It would have be tidier mains one of those records. and certainly more convenient for Effigy of the Forgotten’s who, what, future list-compilers if Chuck Schulwhere, why and how was detailed when diner and Death had actually invented we opened the blood-caked gates of death metal, but its origins in large our hallowed Hall of Fame to it back part lie here, within the chaotic cain May 2009 (issue #55), and the alcophony that is Seven Churches. bum remains an unquestionable sonic From producer Randy Burns’ force. If death metal ever needed exHammer Horror retooling of The planatory quantification for disbelievExorcist theme to the final dying ing parents/prog rock-lovin’ uncles/ seconds of closer “Death Metal,” significant others, one could easily it’s a blizzard of bellicose blasphemy pop this beast on and watch friends that fueled the furnace in which the and loved ones recoil in shock at subsequent DM exploFrank Mullen’s unearthly sion was forged. From ’85 growl, the clinically inMY TOP 5 onwards, Death, Morbid cisive chromatic guitar wrangling, the thesaurusTERRANCE Angel, Obituary, Deicide and many, many more drew raping song titles and the inspiration–consciously fabled “Smith-blast,” where or otherwise–from Posthen-drummer Mike Smith Suffocation sessed’s crude, craniumhooked extreme music tubObituary, crushing racket. It may thumping onto the back Slowly We Rot not sound a whole lot like end of a nitro-powered CorDeath, Spiritual death metal does in the 21st vette and drove it through a Healing century–some still prefer hailstorm. to stick the “thrash” tag on Cannibal Your family and friends Corpse, it–but it’s impossible to may be horrified and pose Eaten Back imagine death metal withage-old redundancies like to Life out it. greg moffitt “Is that music or noise?” Morbid Angel, and “Is he really singing Altars of something?” but as far as Madness we’re concerned, that’s the way it was meant to be. Carcass, Symphonies kevin stewart-panko of Sickness

HOBBS

he ante for transgressive samples was ratcheted on this classic–what felt like, at the time, a new high-water mark in how disturbing a death metal album could be. Not even the comic book-ish Vincent Locke cover could soften the repulsive misogyny or absolve Tomb of the the depravity of child molestaMutilated tion that poisoned the lyrics Metal Blad e ( 19 9 2) like some sick black heart (at parties, we skipped the outro playground sample on “Necropedophile,” but alone I think we all listened and winced every time). All of it was underscored with an atypical (for the Morrisound era) hyper-concise, almost intimate production: fizzy guitars angular with favored tritone runs and punctured by carpetrolled blasts, that endlessly stabbing dry snare–and always Alex Webster’s clattering bass, rubbery and squirming. The songs are some of the most dynamic, catchy death metal ever recorded–riffs lurch double-time only to skid into non-divisible tempi, but somehow make perfect, terrible sense. Inimitable breakdowns and marches temper the wandering up-tempo flurries (a rare album that utilizes the entire fretboard). Still, dig deeper and you’ll find the songs obey an internal logic, each riff evolving into others, circling back, classic song construction taken to an interesting extreme. The album as a whole so impressed at the time that few even attempted to follow. It is the grave dirt beneath a child-killer’s fingernails. A sickly hallowed masterwork. matthew widener

Cannibal Corpse

Carcass Heartwork

C ol um bia /Ea ra c he (19 9 3 )

Appreciating a death metal record for its guitar work is like admiring a piece by Monet because it involves the use of paint. Regardless, the serrated awesomeness of the six-string slinging on Heartwork hooks the listener from the first “Buried Dreams” riff and makes words like “solid” and “inspired” sound like

insults. Thrashing rhythm guitar, biting leads, and the unflagging potency of Steer’s and Amott’s terrifyingly brilliant solos all burrow through ears/skull to carve songs into the soft, wrinkly neuron bundle beneath. That Heartwork doesn’t feel the need to immediately flash its Extremer Than Thou badge is another of its charms; when the pulse slows and the band’s sound fattens up, Heartwork shares more than a little in common with a late ’80s rock record. Jeff Walker’s distinctive vocals further separate Carcass from the gutturally gurgling pack. Combine these superlative sonic qualities with rank-breaking lyrics about simple human frustrations (“No Love Lost,” “Embodiment”) and you have an album whose broad appeal is impossible to overstate–I even know a certain five-year-old girl who whined when I turned off “Death Certificate” before it was done. daniel lake

Obituary Cause of Death

This is it. Like an Ever Flowing Stream is one of death metal’s all-time classics. And it’s not just us proclaiming this with demands that you fall in line behind our sage words. Sure, the material comprising this most vaunted of albums absolutely slays, but it can be deduced that Ever Flowing Stream is a classic when you consider how much it’s been poked, prodded, studied, dissected and ripped off. That’s how you know something has resonated with the greater public: when the greater public pays tribute by copying the shit out of your creation. Volumes have already been written

Bolt Thrower Realm of Chaos E a r a c he (1 9 8 9 )

on this album and its significance to the legacy of Swe-death and death metal in general. Daniel Ekeroth gives the band and album its rightful due in his Swedish Death Metal tome, we also have in it our hallowed Hall of Fame (issue #70, August, 2010), and how many times a month does a band in our review section get compared to Dismember and this album? And if, after all that, you still haven’t submitted yourself to the buzzsaw din of “Skin Her Alive,” “Soon to Be Dead” or “And So Is Life” what’s your fucking problem? Seriously?! kevin stewart-panko

L i k e C a r c a s s , England’s Bolt Thrower emerged from their country’s grindcore scene, but went on to make a vital contribution to the development of death metal and became one of the few UKDM outfits to achieve international success. Where the band’s rough ‘n’ ready 1988 debut In Battle There Is No Law! sounds like the world’s largest cement mixer, the 1989 follow-up hits home like a laser-guided missile. Songwriting, performance, production and artwork–all take a quantum leap forward to make Realm of Chaos a true death metal classic. Although small by U.S. or Scandinavian standards–particularly given the country’s size–the U.K. death metal

Ro ad r u n n er [1990]

Dismember Like an Ever Flowing Stream Nu clear Blast ( 19 9 1)

scene distinguished itself by producing distinctive bands, and Bolt Thrower’s sound is unique. Bruising and bottomheavy, it emphasizes pummeling, midpaced riffage over out-and-out speed. It’s a blitzkrieg of bowel-loosening, bone-shaking battle anthems. Dirty, destructive and down-tuned to the depths of hell, it’s death metal like people just might actually die. The stench of patchouli oil gave way to a whiff of cordite and Bolt Thrower’s transformation was complete. They still played shows for punks and crusties, but Realm of Chaos rams right to death metal’s core like an armoured bulldozer. greg moffitt

Of all the archetypal death metal records engineered at Morrisound, Cause of Death is the biggest outlier. From the get-go, Obituary’s approach was always more “kitchen sink” than “meat and potatoes.” The Florida quintet’s biggest influences were Celtic Frost and Venom, genre rulebreakers who basically made shit up as they went along. Death metal was secondary on Cause of Death; creating an asphyxiating soundtrack of decay and dying to match John Tardy’s unintelligible invocations was the primary goal. The first two tracks–“Infected” and “Body Bag”–are set at such a molten tempo that a better title for the album might’ve been “Slower We Rot.” It’s no coincidence that the best Obituary album is the only one that features lead guitarist James Murphy, fresh from the triumph of Death’s Spiritual Healing. Allen West’s work on 1989’s Slowly We Rot and 1992’s The End Complete rules pretty hard, too, but Murphy’s solos on “Infected” and “Chopped in Half ” offer a more dramatic, virtuosic and catchy dimension to the band. Of course, the cover of Celtic Frost’s “Circle of the Tyrants” is pitch-perfect: For the first half of the ’90s, Obituary could do no wrong. nick green

MY TOP 5 LORD

WORM

ex-Cryptopsy Sodom, In the Sign of Evil Hellhammer, Apocalyptic Raids

10 Cryptopsy

None So Vile

w rong aga in (1996)

he internet wouldn’t be debating the relevance of metal vocalists in 2012 if more of these dipshit kids were taking cues from Lord Worm. Born Dan Greening, the original frontman of Montréal tech-death legends Cryptopsy didn’t just lend considerable invertebrate-chomping flair to the band’s live show, but some of the most eloquently macabre lyrics the genre has ever enjoyed. In that vein, sophomore effort None So Vile’s malevolence (“Shriek to your heart’s content, if you wish / I promise you pain and nightmares, in that sequence”), morbidity (“In the kitchen with a screaming triple amputee / Its completion depends solely on my needs”) and florid filth (“Material birth be abjure / a mother’s cunt is unpure”) may today conjure Cannibal Corpse, Cradle of Filth or Pig Destroyer, but every line is imprinted with Worm’s unmistakable flair. With a weapon like this, it’s little surprise the then-quartet had their sights set on impressing icons across the extreme spectrum.

Aggression, Forgotten Skeleton

bum to start with a bang,” “None So Vile may have Suffocation, taken me only one afterWorm says, “but as for Human Waste the outro, the idea was noon of recording, but the Mortician, lyrical composition and that if this album was too Mortal Massacre arrangements took close extreme for you, then you to a year,” Worm emails. should ‘run home and cry “When we went into [the] studio, we were to mama’–it was an attitude thing”), ready. All we knew about our upcoming None So Vile remains an influential clasproduct, at that time, was that it seemed sic in our world, less so in its creators’: to us as though it could stand its ground Mounier shrugged, “To this day, I still against the bands we admired most [for don’t see the impact of it” in our HOF, and Worm concurs: “This is maybe gotheir brutality]: Brutal Truth, Kataklysm, Deicide and Napalm Death. If we could ing to sound bad, but I don’t hear any get even a nod of recognition from such influence. Metal was already headed in über-gods as Suffocation and Morbid Anthat direction anyway, so we might have gel, we figured we were on the right track.” had nothing to do with how other bands Indeed, as detailed in our NSV Hall turned out.” of Fame (#087, Jan., 2012), guitarist Jon Though both camps remain pals, reconvening for NSV classics as reLevasseur, bassist Eric Langlois and drummer Flo Mounier were excited to cently as 2011, Worm is content to reinoculate the straightforwardness of define his lyrical discipline in new black but predecessor Blasphemies Made Flesh metal project Rage Nucléaire: “I get to with “misdirection,” “funk parts” (see: say what I want and however I wish to “Slit Your Guts”) and an intentionally say it, but there is a thematic focus to less technical, raw approach. Bookended KILL-HATE-WAR-VIOLENCE [our with samples from The Exorcist III and creed]. So, expect Worm lyrics, but with Army of Darkness (“We did want the alfirearms.” andrew bonazelli

9 Repulsion Horriﬁed

n e c rosis (1989)

orrified was way ahead of its time. Its influence and longevity has outlived the band’s brief life, and it will forever be one of the most important books in the death metal bible. Legendary by now, the album began life more humbly, as self-financed recording Slaughter of the Innocent, quickly splattered onto tape in 1986 for a mere $300. Three years later, the Carcass-driven Necrosis Records released the 18-song mess of rotting sonic sewage and re-dubbed it Horrified. There has never been another album quite like it, before or since. Horrified is a sick tangle of monomaniacal death/grind. One-dimensional in the best way, the album delivers an utterly mad batch of noise, a clatter that its members–Matt Olivo, Scott Carlson, Aaron Freeman and Dave “Grave”

Hollingshead–didn’t even have a name for. Bassist Carlson considers its genre placement “irrelevant–we just called it Morbid Comedy-core.” Whatever you call it, it is scathing, dementedly beautiful stuff. Carlson’s bass

drips with acid fuzz, and the guitars of Olson adds, “We were faster than anyone. ivo and Freeman scorch and stab through [Napalm Death’s] Mick Harris may have drummer Dave Grave’s unhinged, unplayed the drums a little faster than Dave, paralleled attack. Back when cassettes of but none of the other bands at that time Slaughter of the Innocent were changing were even close in the guitar department.” hands via snail mail, youngsters Shane The little band from Flint, MI called Embury, Jesse Pintado, Nicke AndersGenocide that became a legendary band son, Bill Steer and Trey Azagthoth were called Repulsion–it’s one of death wildly inspired, each claiming Repulsion metal’s greatest stories, considering Horas a major influence on their own bands. rified’s popularity nearly 30 years later. Through the ripping 18-song ride– Olivo never thought the stuff would make song lengths ranging from that much impact, he was “merely hoping someone 1:05 (“Pestilent Decay”) MY TOP 5 to an epic 2:17 (“Black somewhere would like our Breath”)–you hear kinship strange brand of death metSCOTT with the early death metal al.” Carlson knew they were and nascent grindcore of the shit all along: “I’m more Repulsion the day. But even then, it surprised by the longevity of never really fit in. “We were death metal and grindcore Celtic Frost, Morbid Tales musical brothers-in-arms in general than I am by our with Death, Slaughter, particular popularity. Not Possessed, Seven Churches Cryptic Slaughter, Celtic to sound ungrateful or arFrost, COC, DRI and Disrogant, but we knew we were Autopsy, charge,” says Olivo, “but good. I’m very pleased that Mental Funeral none of them were really people had a chance to hear Entombed, doing what we were doing. us on a bigger scale than just Wolverine Blues We were really striking out the tape-trading circuit.” Morbid Angel, on our own.” To which Carljeff wagner Altars of Madness

CARLSON

Morbid Angel Covenant

gia nt (1993)

“Morbid Angel are on a major label now–fuck them, the sellouts.” –

rontman David Vincent is quick to recall to one of the many barbs directed at the death metal legends after signing to Warner subsidiary Giant Records back in 1992. The sweatpant-adorned outrage seems ridiculous 20 years later, but when Morbid Angel became labelmates with Air Supply and Color Me Badd, there clearly were fears that the newly-slimmed-down trio of bassist/vocalist Vincent, guitarist Trey Azagthoth and drummer Pete Sandoval would move in a more commercial direction. “If anything, we got faster and more aggressive,” says Vincent. “But none of these things were pre-designed. We just

went in and just pounded all of this stuff out in the way we always do. It was very bohemian. It was natural evolution. We

were pretty stoked and egotistically fulfilled about being the first band of our style to go onto a major.” Released in the summer of ’93, Covenant not only silenced underground skeptics, but–via major label muscle–produced a pair of sleek videos (“Rapture” and “God of Emptiness”) that brought uncompromising death metal to the Headbangers Ball masses. Though the record would go on to sell well over 150,000 copies in the U.S., that didn’t stop some executives at Giant from attempting to insinuate themselves into the creative side of the Morbid camp. “They had some A&R guy who they wanted to ‘get involved’ and come down to the studio and steer [the record] in some direction,” Vincent recalls. “And our manger was on the phone for a meeting with the label, and he said, ‘Will you put me on speakerphone, please? Now, is

everyone there? OK, if any of you come to the studio and get close to the band, I’m gonna fly out there and kill you.’” No suits were harmed during the making of Covenant, but Vincent recalls that Azagthoth’s multiple 13-hour studio days caused a “baseball-sized” welt on the guitarist’s strumming hand, while Sandoval only survived the recording thanks to the studio’s helpful amenities. “I remember there was a janitorial service that came to the studio and provided towels,” the Morbid frontman recalls. “Pete worked so hard [and] was sweating so much that he’d create these pools of sweat on the floor from playing, which we sopped up with towels. One day, he asked for some water, and I said, ‘We’re not gonna give you any more water until you finish the track, because all you’re doing is sweating it out. Stop sweating–it’s costing us an extra couple hundred dollars a month for this janitorial service!’ I did it as a joke, of course. But it’s a testament of how we went in there and just killed it.” albert mudrian

7 At the Gates Slaughter of the soul

ea ra c he (1995 )

have come to understand that it’s a record that a lot of people hold close to heart, and that’s very flattering,” says At the Gates vocalist Tomas Lindberg upon hearing that the Gothenburg band’s landmark Slaughter of the Soul has been named the seventh best death metal album of all time. However, he adds cautiously, “If we would go around worrying about which kind of bands that might have been influenced by it, it would probably a) get us a bit confused with the size of our own egos, and b) make us think too much before creating art altogether. The key to creating honest, what you would call true art or music is not too care too much about what other people think. There are, though, a lot of bands and people that I hold very dear that have at one time or another mentioned the record as an influence and that, of course, makes me smile inside.”

Slaughter’s smart juxtaholds a theme and a feeling that is, as you position of death metal’s say, best experienced from start to finish. physicality with traditional There are, of course, always certain songs heavy metal structures and that you feel are more coherent or stronhooks is easily the most inger. For me a song like ‘Under a Serpent Sun’ is a good song that has all the good fluential–some might say overdone–form of heavy elements of the whole album and has a metal over the past dozen years, but as lot of strong themes. But there are quite they saying goes, imitation is the sincera few songs that I hold dear. ‘Unto Others’ est form of flattery. When is another one, but I guess you go back to that record, everyone has a favorite of though, it still packs a waltheir own.” MY TOP 5 lop that no melodeath Lindberg adds, “I feel TOMAS metal album since can equal. that these songs still are very Highlighted by “Blinded by close to me, even the person Fear,” “Under a Serpent that I am 16 or so years after At the Gates Sun” and the explosive they were recorded… I think Possessed, title track, it can be argued that is one of the reasons Seven Churches that we are still enjoying that the 34-minute album Death, Scream approaches the nary-a-secwhat we do so much, and– Bloody Gore ond-wasted focus of Slayer’s it seems–that the audience Repulsion, Reign in Blood. does, too. These songs are Horrified “It is created as one still us, so to say. I think they Morbid Angel, piece,” Lindberg agrees. have aged well, and that we Altars of “It’s not a concept album have aged at the same pace Madness lyrically in any way, but as the music, I guess,” he Autopsy, Mental musically and artistically it laughs. adrien begrand Funeral

LINDBERG

6 Death leprosy

c om bat (1988)

hen reviewing Leprosy for German metal mag Rock Hard, Thomas Kupfer blew his beans and called it “a thrash milestone,” awarding it an exultant 9/10 score before going on to declare that Death’s sophomore album was ample compensation for anyone who was disappointed in Slayer’s South of Heaven. Now, wait, you’re thinking. “A thrash milestone”? What’s South of Heaven got to do with Death, right? But remember: Leprosy dropped in November ’88. Like the disease it took its name from, Leprosy was beyond comprehension to those who first discovered it; there was no death metal scene within which Leprosy could be pulled apart and contextualized. We can now, though.

Metal historians routinely dig up Death’s debut, Scream Bloody Gore, as prima facie evidence of death metal’s first official debut on a full-length album. Hitherto, Death and the genre existed only in demos, or happened fleetingly in moments occurring in that undeclared no man’s land between the most unruly thrash and nascent death metal. But if Death’s debut gave death metal form, Leprosy propagated the genre to a wider audience, taking it international. Ol’ Kupfer was of his time. But in a way he was ahead of it, too; his wouldn’t be the last death metal review to praise a band for their “brutal riffs.” Leprosy’s inception began once guitarist/vocalist Chuck Schuldiner returned from California. There he had tracked Scream Bloody Gore at the Music Grinder studios in Los Angeles. Chris Reifert did not join him on the journey to Florida, and Schuldiner desperately needed a

band. In what would become a signature move, Massacre had recently split up and their guitarist, Schuldiner’s former Mantas bandmate Rick Rozz, needed a band. As it happened: Death pretty much subsumed Massacre. “That was ’87, early ’87. I think Scream Bloody Gore had been recorded, and it was soon to come out when we actually joined the band,” recalls Terry Butler, who never played bass on Leprosy, despite being credited and playing on its successor, Spiritual Healing. “Rick contacted him because he and Kam [Lee, ex-Massacre] obviously had jammed with Chuck way in the past, in the band Mantas. We had been together maybe a month, and we went and played… I think it was the first Milwaukee Metal Fest. We did an official tour of the East Coast, like 20 shows–the Scream Bloody Tour we called it–then we came back and started writing for Leprosy.” jonathan horsley

5 Autopsy

Mental Funeral

p e a cev il l e (1991)

t’s no secret that Autopsy drummer Chris Reifert is a weird dude. We don’t mean that as in waiting-for-his-mental-time-bomb-to-blow weird. Au contraire; we want the guy who helmed charmingly-named albums like Shitfun and Urine Junkies hanging around, if only to see what gems he comes up with next. So, we weren’t totally surprised when he responded with, “Just trying to write heavy-ass death metal that makes you feel like you’re oozing and bleeding in the sewers of hallucinogenic damnation while your features slowly slide off of your face and the rats wait patiently for their meals to hit the floor” when asked what Autopsy were shooting for on death metal’s fifth greatest album ever. Mental Funeral’s upper echelon placing may not be surprising to most (laudation by press and fans, and reissues in 2003 and 2011 illustrate the respect held

for the record), but Reifert still seems genuinely shocked when informed of the Top 10 finish of Autopsy’s 1991 album. Probably because, as he (sorta) recalls,

it was recorded amidst a week-long party and completed with little more in mind than spilling whatever metal was bouncing around the band’s collective head. “Well, I had to consult my copy of the album,” he says laughing, when asked about the studio sessions, “but it was seven days at Different Fur Studios in San Francisco. I figured ‘the Residents recorded there, so it must be a cool place!’ We tested it out before with the Retribution for the Dead EP and loved it. I do recall lots of friends partying and running around. Hammy from Peaceville was there, a constant cloud of smoke filled the air and plenty of bottles of booze were drained. A lot of it is a blur, but I remember the feeling when the headphones went on for the first time to start the record. It’s a really intense feeling that to this day it never gets old. “We always dug the hell out of doomy stuff, from Black Sabbath onward,” he continues about the album’s influences, “but it was simply about being as heavy and soul-crushing as possible. With Mental Funeral, the production gives it a more

doomy sound, even on the speedier parts. It reeks of filth, fury and darkness, and wants to crawl into your skull and lay eggs in your brain.” Mental Funeral has been referred to in certain circles as “imperfect perfection” and considering the description of the scene at Different Fur, it certainly leads one to believe that despite the creation of something special and lasting, things were more touch-and-go than history dictates. “We were very confident in our abilities as writers and musicians. It’s not technically or computer-perfect, but it’s real people making music in the same room at the same time, just like how we do it today. Feel is important, and if we let things get too glossed over, the personality gets lost. As far as the songs go, there are some pretty crazy changes and timings, and it’s not as easy as some people think, but we weren’t thinking about being unique or anything like that, though. We just wanted to make the heaviest death metal album we could.” kevin stewart-panko

MY TOP 5 UFFE

CEDERLUND

ex-Entombed

4 Entombed

left hand path

ea ra c he (1990)

efore 1990, the phrase “Swedish Death Metal” simply did not exist. By June of that year, however, Left Hand Path would change all that. Detonating the underground with its staggering buzzsaw guitar sound, mind-blowing riffs, barbaric vocals, and a rhythmic thrust echoing Autopsy and Discharge in equal measure, a genre was born. Before Entombed, however, there was Nihilist, and an offer to open for Napalm Death in 1988 at a gig in Stockholm. Tagging along as Napalm’s manager, Earache boss Digby Pearson was front and center for the Swedes’ set. “Dig must have enjoyed the show because he called Nicke asking about Nihilist,” recalls guitarist

Uffe Cederlund. “We had just changed our name to Entombed, so we sent him our old Nihilist demos and also the new demo [1989’s But Life Goes On] we had just done as Entombed.” Blown away by the material, Pearson rushed over the contracts immediately and work began on Left Hand Path.

Death, Scream Bloody Gore Autopsy, ative. Drums, guitar riffs, “Everything was so fresh Mental Funeral solos, artwork, you name back then, and most death Necrophagia, metal bands had their own it. He was always coming up Season of style,” Cederlund explains with something interesting. the Dead when asked about EnEven in the studio during Repulsion, Left Hand Path, he would tombed’s unique approach Horrified to songwriting. “In those come up with changes and Obituary, days, no one thought that ideas five minutes before we Slowly We Rot death metal should sound hit the record button.” one way or another way. It Traveling to England was an attitude. Bands were coming from to open for Carcass in early June 1990, different backgrounds, so naturally the Entombed would get their first peek at music had different influences. It was the finished Left Hand Path CDs during not until later that bands were being a visit to the Earache offices. “It was like, influenced directly by other death metal ‘Wow! This feels fucking great!’ We were so young and we had a punk/slacker/webands. Plus, today all studios have the same computers, but back then Sunlight don’t-give-a-fuck-let’s-get-drunk attitude, Studio was special in its own way.” Special but when it came to doing Left Hand Path, we felt like we had to pull off a great album indeed, as Left Hand Path was the second LP ever recorded (predating classic deto prove that Sweden had something to buts by Dismember, Carnage, Grave, etc.) offer. We felt a responsibility somehow. under Sunlight’s soon-to-be-infamous I hope we pulled it off !” If the album’s Tomas Skogsberg. enduring cult status and the nine zillion “Playing with [original Entombed bands that formed in its wake are any drummer] Nicke Andersson back then indication, we think he’s got his answer. was a big part of it, too. He was so crescott koerber

3 Death

Human

r e l ativ ity (1991)

lthough popular opinion is that Death’s fourth album, Human, was the singular product of Schuldiner, Reinert, Masvidal and DiGiorgio, four of the album’s eight tracks–“Suicide Machine,” “Together as One” and two others–were actually forged under Death’s Spiritual Healing lineup; sans axe-slinger James Murphy. Human was, however, going to be a transitional album regardless of who backed Schuldiner. But it wouldn’t have been transformative without Cynic and Sadus members pushing death metal musicianship and composition to its early ’90s limits. That they were able to make inroads into Schuldiner’s oftclosed universe was critical to how Human turned out. “The music evolved and we knew there would be no turning back,” says Human string-burner and Cynic headman Paul Masvidal. “Human was not only brutal,

but also primarily fast, precise and technical, while maintaining catchy songwriting. It felt like the beginning of a new identity for Death.”

Just as every Death long-player displayed progress–in musicianship, lyrical composition/themes, and production– Human was Schuldiner’s quantum leap. And a genre game-changer. No longer was death metal trapped under its own construct. It was free to explore and experiment. With “Flattening of Emotions” leading the prog-death charge and “Lack of Comprehension” launching Death into mainstream video/chartland, Human immediately stunned and shocked scene veterans and curious passersby alike. “Chuck had a voice that was recognizable, and that’s not something you can teach any musician,” Masvidal remembers. “His songwriting was always identifiable and uniquely his own. He had something to say, and worked hard at developing and refining that voice further. He really had a sincere desire to evolve as an artist by always pushing himself the best he could. He also matured a lot lyrically, which is evident over the span of his records. To this day, you can hear many a band and immediately recognize if there’s a Death in-

fluence. He did the work of a real artist, in that he’s inspired countless others to create their own and keep reaching for greater heights. It’s that unsaid, energetic component that holds the magic in his work, and that’s what keeps it alive to this day.” It’s hard to imagine Death’s legacy– Human in particular–in a diminished capacity, actually. The recent Relapse reissues have gone a long way to ensure Schuldiner’s music remains eternal. So too did the Death to All tour, a limited run which found ex- and non-Death members playing a variety of Schuldiner’s music to celebrate Death’s memory. “Having come off this tour,” says Masvidal, “I was able to relive some of what spoke to me about the music to begin with, and came to realize that we made something unique and honest–I’m grateful for that. It certainly documents a time in my life I’ll never forget.” Though Death would go on to write many more stellar records, it’s Human where Schuldiner and cast altered the future. chris dick

MY TOP 5 BILL

STEER

Carcass Morbid Angel, Abominations of Desolation

2 Carcass

Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious ea ra c he ( 19 9 1)

ven in the afterlife, there’s work to do.” The lyrics from the song “Inpropagation” could easily refer to the album it opens: Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious. Endlessly praised, dissected and descanted by two generations of metal fans, Carcass’s third album wasn’t just a musical breakthrough for the band, but arguably the birth of melodic death metal.

sight into their great business philosophy: We were told in no Repulsion, uncertain terms that, ‘You can Horrified either get big and famous or That Combat make money–but you can’t Records album have both.’” that was rejected Carcass didn’t get rich but got mixed and released later but or famous (outside of metal was better as the circles). Instead, they created rough mix-master something timeless. With Death, new guitarist Michael Amott Scream (who later became famous in Bloody Gore Arch Enemy) and a desire to Entombed, broaden their musical palette, Left Hand Path they started writing. They had outgrown the rudimentary Reek of Putrefaction and considerably more evolved Symphonies of Sickness. “We branched out and took risks,” guitarist Bill Steer says. “In the period following Symphonies, we’d observed how many other bands were plowing a similar furrow. We wanted to distance ourselves, incorporate some of the non-death metal influences we had and stretch whatever abilities we had to the limit.” Some of it was serendipity. The famous opening riff to “Corporal” dropped into Steer’s lap, much like Everyone has a moment on Necroti“Paranoid” did for Tony Iommi. “The cism that raises goosebumps. I think it’s opening riff was arrived at in a rather Ken Owen’s drum introduction to “Corbackward fashion,” Steer says. “I’d been poral Jigsore Quandary,” the ominous sitting at the drum kit, trying to imitate buildup to one of the finest metal riffs a drum groove I’d heard on a Racer X ever written. For vocalist/bassist Jeff album. I couldn’t get close to it, and the Walker, it’s the ending and guitar harbastardized version is what you hear at mony to “Carneous Cacoffiny.” He calls the beginning of the song. Once we had it an “absolute joy to play live.” the drum pattern, I stumbled on a primiLike many memorable albums, Netive riff that seemed to fit.” croticism was cobbled together under Is it strange that an album with the subtitle Descanting the Insalubrious tough circumstances with little thought would make any best-of list? Walker of posthumous accolades. Carcass didn’t have a contract when they started to doesn’t think so. He also insists on callrecord. Money problems plagued the ing it Carcass’s progressive album. “I band throughout the recording. “We think it’s stranger that our earlier more were shopping the rough mixes around,” ‘brutal’ and ‘death metal’ albums are Walker recalls. “We went to see Roadrunnot as high as this on the list,” he says. ner in London, where we obtained an injustin m. norton

MESHUGGAH Koloss

*Get your music from a record store. Find them at www.mymetalclub.com

1 Morbid Angel Altars of Madness ea ra c he (1989)

hen Morbid Angel bassist/vocalist David Vincent cites the late transhumanist Timothy Leary as a foundational influence during a wide-ranging conversation delving into the root and marrow of the 1989 extreme metal game changer Altars of Madness, the reference is startlingly apropos: After all, even in the wake of everything the album has spawned, Altars remains, in Leary-speak, a “consciousness-altering device,” which–much like the microscope, telescope and certain psychedelic compounds before it–“allows us to peer into bits and zones of Chaos.” “We wanted to create atmospheres that would lay the foundation for people to use their own imaginations,” Vincent says. “Yes, the music is brutal and aggressive, but it’s also dreamy. We looked inward, not outward, for inspiration, rehearsing six to eight hours a day, exploring new ideas and working on what many would think of as the slightest of details in order to get to places musically that would go… beyond.” “Imagination is such a gift,” he continues. “It is what has propelled humanity forward since the advent of history. Part of our message from day one has been, Think for yourself. The lyrics I write–and Trey [Azagthoth] is the same way–are full of these little intersections where you can choose to go straight, turn left, turn

right, do a U-turn, whatever. We leave those in there on purpose. People can follow the bouncing ball and interpret it however they like. The song is written. My work is done. Humans are dynamic creatures with dynamic opinions. What is important to one might not be important to another, and vice versa. Leaving things open to interpretation encourages people to maybe think a little deeper, a little more outside the box. Humanity doesn’t have as much time or opportunity to do that these days, and I think the world suffers as a result.” Before Morbid Angel could open those gloriously transcendent gateways to (boundary) annihilation for the rest of us, however, they had to themselves summon this perfect maelstrom into

existence, redefining heavy music by essentially shunting aside the concept of definition and emulating another oftquoted-if-rarely-observed Leary maxim: “If you don’t like what you’re doing, you can always pick up your needle and move to another groove.” “I listened to metal because it had good musicianship, and I listened to hardcore because it had raw energy,” Vincent explains. “There weren’t the same amalgamations back then. A lot of metal musicians dismissed the ferocity of hardcore as basically just noise, and a lot of the hardcore musicians possessed this incredible rage, but, generally speaking, couldn’t play their instruments. We were just into powerful, magical music and not so concerned with those sorts of divisions. For us, a song started with a feeling, a riff, an intent, and we let it evolve from there. Towing the status quo may be comfortable, but it won’t break any new ground, and it wasn’t for us.” This, of course, virtually guaranteed a more arduous path. “Paradigm shifters are always dealt a large portion of resistance before they are accepted and embraced,” guitarist Trey Azagthoth muses in the liner notes of the 2006 Altars reissue and, indeed, there were lean years of creative sturm und drang. “I’m not going to say ‘delusions,’ but we definitely had visions of grandeur,” Vincent says. “You know, it wasn’t until after Altars came out that all these labels started saying, ‘We have to find our Morbid Angel,’ but we never took the rejection personally. It wasn’t like, ‘Gee, what are we doing wrong?’ It was more, ‘Alright, these people aren’t on our level. Sooner or later we’ll find someone who is.’ We’d hear, ‘You oughta slow it down and make

the guitar stuff more melodic.’ OK. Fuck you. Next. ‘Oh, we just can’t get behind the whole Satanic thing.’ OK. Fuck you. Next. ‘There are already too many Angel bands–you’ve got to change your name.’ Fuck you. Next. Eventually [Earache Records founder] Digby [Pearson] said, ‘Man, I like it just the way it is. Let’s do this’…and so when [Altars] came out exactly as we intended, it was a validation of the things we had believed in our hearts all along.” An album recorded nearly a quartercentury ago on a budget somewhere in the $5,000 range is bound to possess moments that nettle the future versions of its still quite active architects. Yet Vincent remains extraordinarily Zen regarding this most sonically un-Zen of albums. “If we were to rerecord Altars today, there are probably a gazillion things I would address, but that’s not how I prefer to look at it,” he says. “We were four talented people who put our heads together and came up with this small piece of history that really connected with people and has legs. What could I be except honored and humbled? There was probably a time when I took the impact of what Morbid Angel has accomplished lightly. I certainly don’t anymore. We’ve been doing this a long time now. I’ll meet people on tour who’ll say, ‘Hey, when Altars came out I was three years old.’ And it’s like, ‘Uh, great… I wasn’t!’ But [that longevity] is kind of a testament to the art and magic of that record. To this day, we can’t play a show without including certain songs off Altars. I imagine Ozzy would probably tell you he couldn’t play a show in his life without playing ‘Paranoid.’ That record contains our ‘Paranoid.’” shawn macomber

We looked inward, not outward, for inspiration, rehearsing six to eight hours a day, exploring new ideas and working on what many would think of as the slightest of details in order to get to places musically that would go… beyond. D AVID VINCENT 47

dROPPInG ThOR’s haMMeR the making of

Unleashed’s

Where No Life Dwells story by chris dick

the early ’90s, the general death metal assumption was that bands from Sweden—particularly Stockholm and its suburbs—were carbon copies of Nihilist. And then Entombed. And then Dismember. Certainly, the second and third generation of Swedes that hell-spawned bands from the subterranean thrust of Hall of Fame records Left Hand Path and Like an Ever Flowing Stream intentionally emulated and then repossessed the “Stockholm Sound” as their own, but several Swedes from the earliest and nastiest days of Swedish death metal never wanted to haunt the same chapel, so to speak. Unleashed, which formed immediately after Johnny Hedlund was ousted from/left Nihilist, had an interpretation of death metal unlike their peers in Sweden. Instead of a maze of riffs inspired by horror movies—and dirty Americans in Autopsy and Repulsion—lead-

master Hedlund and his newly minted Unleashed opted not for the right or left hand paths, but to trailblaze their own. By centering on songcraft, but not losing sight of Swedish death metal mores, Unleashed—in many respects—reflected the output of Venom, Motörhead, Sodom and, yes, Autopsy. That is to say, they wrote clearly defined, traditionally structured songs—the tap-your-foot, bang-your-brains-out kind expressly tailored for the stage—when complexity and histrionic displays of musicianship were all the rage. As early as debut demo The Utter Dark and its follow-up …Revenge (both from ’90), Unleashed were different. Brutal all the same, but the songwriting concept—simpler is better—was advanced for the era. Maybe it was retro before there was retro, but it’d take Entombed and Dismember a few years/records to figure out what Unleashed had already known

cal, linguistic and economic reasons, Unleashed’s contemporaries stayed closed to home at the time. But by venturing away from studios in Stockholm and into the arms of producer/Despair guitarist Waldemar Sorychta in Dortmund, the Swedes found a new sonic signature. Where No Life Dwells isn’t like other Swedish death metal records of the era. Songs like “Dead Forever,” “Before the Creation of Time,” “Unleashed,” “If They Had Eyes” and “Into Glory Ride” had power and clarity. Coupled with Sorychta’s clear DBHOF94 yet punchy production—more like Colin Richardson than, say, Tomas Skogsberg—Unleashed’s Where No Life songs didn’t have to be studied Dwells CenTuRy MedIA, 1991 or endlessly revisited to understand. They were built on an The original (Swedish) Viking death cult array of tightly controlled and repeated riffs— and parlayed into their two demos, the now ultrathe rhythm section replicated the idea—so the rare EP And the Laughter Has Died… and debut fullend result mirrored British heavy metal more length, Where No Life Dwells. than the (equally enjoyable) murk emanating out of Stockholm. Unleashed were well-known to tape-traders, but the Swedes Additionally, Hedlund and company were the first to incorpowere interested in more. Not just a one-off on an obscure foreign rate Viking motifs—lyrical and aesthetical—into the deathiest label (of which there were plenty), but tours, promotion and folof metal. While it may not be a distinguishing factor now, from a low-up records. Like any other young, energized group of dudes, historical perspective, it immediately set Unleashed apart. Sure, they wanted to pursue their idols. They got the deal they were they had anti-Christian and D&D-based lyrics, but the Viking thing looking for (sort of) by signing to then-nascent Century Media. was absolutely unique. Clearly, the label saw potential in an ex-Nihilist product, and Joining Entombed and Dismember at one end of the Hall, and brisk sales of Unleashed demos—3,000-plus copies each—made Motörhead and Venom at the other, it’s with great respect we the possibility of a full-length an easier sell. So, Unleashed ferried finally open the doors to Unleashed’s Where No Life Dwells. Onward down to Germany twice—in ’90 for a promo and in ’91 for Where into glory ride, boys! [] No Life Dwells—to record where no Swedish band dared. For logisti-

Unleashed

Unleashed where no life dwells What do you remember about the year leading up to Where No Life Dwells?

Headbanging and parties in the wild. [Laughs] Or, in a local, not-too-crowded subway station. Now, these were the days when there weren’t too many shows around, and not too many places would host 20-40 death-bangers with Autopsy and Morbid Angel on full volume. I guess you could say we had a great time wherever we found a spot where we could be left alone, sometimes on a mountain. Or wherever, really. I had a mountain very close to my apartment where we used to have pretty large parties. The best was that nobody could complain since we were way out in the wild. Anders Schultz: The “golden” years! [Laughs] Yeah, those were good times. We spent a lot of time as you do as kids, just drinking and being rowdy. Chaos in the streets, more or less. A gang of metalheads roaming around with tape recorders and beer. In parks and streets in the summer, and the subway in the winters. There were not so many of us in those days, so people found each other even if we were not from the same parts of the city. And, of course, a lot of time spent in the practice room. And as soon as things started happening with the band after the demos, we got to do some cool things—like the Bolt Thrower/ Nocturnus tour—and went down to Germany to record a 7-inch. Tomas Måsgard: I recall we spent a lot of time in the rehearsal room and had a lot of fun back then. We went to Germany to record a 7-inch (And the Laughter Has Died...) in late ’90, and I remember we toured with Bolt Thrower and Nocturnus in early winter ’91. That was our first tour. It was a good experience, looking back. Our horrible “tour bus”—a.k.a. “freeze mobile”—was a VW bus from, say, 1938. The side sliding door flew right off [after] first loading. No heat, not enough seating, one guy had to sit in the back on a merch box holding a gas tube warming device. I was the driver, and the guys had to scrape the ice from the inside of the windshield in order for me to be able to see. We slept at venues, which weren’t always that nice. It worked for a few days, and then we demanded a RV, which we got! Johnny Hedlund:

How did Fredrik Lindgren, Anders and Tomas come into the Unleashed fold? Seems like they were plucked out of thin death metal air, as their previous band history isn’t well known.

Well, I think they all had their little bands just like I had Nihilist way back then. Anders was there almost from the start, and naturally I met the young son of a gun at a party, drinking far too much for his age. I think I had

Hedlund:

to take care of him somehow, only to end up buying hard liquor for him later on, but what the heck. He had to become a real drummer now that he was in Unleashed. [Laughs] I found Fredrik Lindgren at some punk/hardcore party back in the mid-’80, long before Unleashed. See, at the time, thrashers—as we were called before death metal was invented here in Sweden—had no place to party at all, and perhaps there were only around 15 or 20 of us that you really knew from weekend to weekend. We had to join the punks since they always had places to go and something brutal happening. Fredrik was one of those guys with long hair always talking about Kreator or Metallica. So, we got along very well. Tomas was in the band also, like Anders very early on, but shortly before recording of the first album. I think we must have met Tomas at a party up north. Our former guitar player had him under his radar.

The Top 3

Where No Life Dwells

Memories

by Robert Kampf, Founder, Century Media Records

On their first-ever tour with Nocturnus and Bolt Thrower in January 1991, they had to be true Vikings; in the middle of winter, the door to their beat-up VW minibus did not close, and they had to more or less hold it shut, which created below-zero temperatures inside all through the tour.

While recording Where No Life Dwells, they were staying at a musician’s apartment rented from the local biker club. The bikers ran a metal club called Spirit, which was in the building below. I remember like it was yesterday, how, after a heavy drinking night, Johnny dragged Fredrik by his feet back to the apartment. Both Johnny and Fredrik easily had a bottle or two of vodka. True warrior drinking!

The band played—after already having recorded Shadows in the Deep—one last show on their Where No Life Dwells cycle. It was at the legendary Dynamo club in Eindhoven, Holland. Seeing it, I had goosebumps the whole show. They were so mighty good. That night, they made the step from very good to great, and I knew right there that now they were an unstoppable force.

Fredrik Lindgren: I didn’t end up in Unleashed. Johnny was my second name as a bass player in my band at the time.

Unleashed were originally going to sign to Deaf/ Peaceville. In the end, you landed on Century Media. What do you remember about Unleashed’s label choices, and what it was like to finally land a deal?

Well, we had an offer from Peaceville in early ’90, but we were never signed to them. Century Media was the only label in the ’90s we were signed to. I guess we signed to them because they could promise an early touring schedule. The record deal itself is still, to this day, a slave contract and illegal to the core. We could take them to court, but it would cost [a lot]. We were young and inexperienced back then. And passionate musicians. We couldn’t think for a second they would blow us to the moon. But we now know they couldn’t care less about the music. They were only in it for the buck. Schultz: I can’t really remember why things didn’t happen with Peaceville, but it was basically between them and Century Media, and we chose the latter. I guess they were more enthusiastic about the whole thing. I remember they called me at my parents’ house to ask if we wanted to sign and where to send a big package of stuff they had released. I was like 16 years old and freaking out, and [had] no idea what to say to some dude calling from Germany. [Laughs] Måsgard: I joined the band in the fall of ’90, and by then the deal was pretty much already done, if I remember correctly. It was a cool thing to get a record deal, of course. Hedlund:

Unleashed were different from other Stockholm bands. More organized compositionally; a different lyrical take; cleaner production. Why was that? Because you were more concerned about playing live than creating studio-only albums?

Naturally, we were and still are [very] much about taking this live as quickly as we could. Unleashed is live music above all. But we also wanted to make death metal that people could remember and actually scream along to, as opposed to riff collections aimed for more technical fans and guitar players. Our main influence was also the Viking traditions and values, which we introduced into death metal music back in 1989. Heavy Load and Bathory did it in heavy metal and black metal, so we thought it should work with death metal, too. And it still does. Schultz: I’m not sure if we were more organized. Not sure if I agree that we had a more clean Hedlund:

KREATOR PHANTOM T S I R H C ANTI *Get your music from a record store. 51 Find them at www.mymetalclub.com

Unleashed where no life dwells

production either. But different, yeah, for sure. We didn’t want to sound like the others from the same area, so we did try to distance ourselves sound-wise. But true, we have always felt that the live atmosphere is the most important part of the band and, of course, it’s great if that comes through in the recordings as well. lindgren: Because Johnny and me hated everything. We didn’t care. Fuck the world. Were the songs on Where No Life Dwells written in a jam room environment or crafted singularly by Johnny?

Most of them were written by me alone in the countryside way up north, where I have a cottage. But, of course, we tried them out in the practice room a lot before recording and deciding what and how, etc. schultz: A bit of both, I’d say. The early songs were all written by Johnny, but they were all jammed in the practice room with all the guys having their input. hedlund:

how would you compare the songs that were carried over from the demos to the songs written for Where No Life Dwells? they’re more measured than the older tunes.

I don’t really remember, but I think we just took the songs we had and made them more tight—more professional than on the demo tapes.

hedlund:

Our horrible “tour bus”–a.k.a. “freeze mobile”– was a VW bus from, say, 1938. I was the driver, and the guys had to scrape the ice from the inside of the windshield in order for me to be able to see.

TO Mas MÅsGa Rd schultz: The songs that went from the demos were, in general, exactly the same as far as I recall. Maybe some slight changes, but I think mostly the sound is what differs. The demos we did were recorded very cheaply, of course, since we were broke, and in those days people didn’t really know how to deal with death metal, so the guy running the studio we used had no idea what to make of it, really. I remember the first time we showed up and started recording, and the guy just sat there like a question mark! [Laughs]

do you remember what records you were listening to and how they inﬂuenced unleashed? i hear Autopsy, but i think structurally it’s almost like motörhead.

You’re right. Motörhead, Venom, Celtic Frost, Autopsy and Death and so on were among

hedlund:

the early influences—also, for the structure of creating tunes. As for the riffing and melodies, all things death and black metal were and still are an influence to some extent. schultz: Well, in those days I say almost everything you grew up on was some sort of influence. Of course, a lot of the stuff coming out at the time was influential—like, as mentioned, Autopsy—but also stuff like Morbid Angel, Death, Necrovore, Bolt Thrower. Well, the list is endless, really. But, yeah, also earlier stuff like Motörhead and Venom, etc. I mean, I’d say the whole childhood from heavy metal and onward was an influence. And not to mention a lot of punk and hardcore as well. lindgren: Venom, Exploited, Sabbath, Maiden, Motörhead, Priest, G.B.H., Slayer, Destruction, Sodom, Pistols, Kreator. The same shit as you probably are listening to now.

Unleashed where no life dwells What did you mean by saying unleashed was “utter dark death metal”?

It didn’t get more dark than that. But keep in mind, this was in 1989. schultz: Well, there was nothing more dark than the utter dark, was there? hedlund:

Anders’ drumming differs from the usual doublebass all the time. the double-bass was used more sparingly. curious how you approached the drums differently from other drummers of the day and genre. schultz: Well, I’m not sure to this day, really. [Laughs] I mean, at the time of the earliest stuff, I was only 16, and by the time we did Where No Life Dwells, I was barely 18. So, I just tried to keep up and make the best of it in a way, to be honest. So many influences, and of course limited knowledge just made for some mad beats! [Laughs] But then, as well as still, I believe making it all fit together is more important than standing out. The songs speak more than individual playing. So, as far as the double-bass, or lack of it, is [concerned], whatever we felt fit the songs best.

Was unleashed very much Johnny’s project? i think, at the time, he was viewed as mr. dictator, but i’m not too sure how people view the album as time rolled on.

Wow, I wonder why nobody told me about it. [Laughs] I have to say I really think we,

hedlund:

at least in the present, have an amazingly wellworking band democracy. But looking back at 1989 and on, I think if there was no one in control of things, we wouldn’t still be around today. Drinking is nice, but you also have to have a steady course. An aim as a band that you never go away from in order to keep working and improving all the time. I think perhaps I tried very hard to never let this ship sink, but to keep sailing across the open sea and claim victories. Again, like we do to this day. schultz: From the start, no doubt it was his project, or idea. And he was definitely most in control. But I think most bands have at least one member taking creative leads in one way or other. But that doesn’t mean all bands have a dictator. The band has been a democracy from the start in decision making of all sorts, so it’s nothing more than rumors, I think. måsgArd: Johnny made most of the songs back then, if that made him ”Mr. Dictator.” [Laughs] We were and are a band with four members, and we are all part of Unleashed.

A lot of people may mistakenly think unleashed derived the Viking/norse themes from Bathory. But, in reality, they—along with Johnny’s first thor’s hammer necklace—came from Johnny’s father. Was Johnny’s father responsible for you pursuing and then creating the first Viking death metal?

Not really. The spirit of our ancestors and the Viking traditions and values are what we have drawn most of our inspirations from. All the way since 1989, when we were formed. Naturally, my father and grandfather played a role to some extent. schultz: The idea of incorporating those lyrical themes were our own. It felt like a fitting subject to the music we played, and more or less no one was doing it in this genre, so we went with it. lindgren: I love Bathory’s first three albums. Raggare are a bunch of motherfuckers. hedlund:

there were other inspirations as well. Dungeons & Dragons in “if they had eyes.” “Before the creation of time” has an existential

Drinking is nice, but you also have to have a steady course. I tried very hard to never let this ship sink, but to keep sailing across the open sea and claim victories.

JO hnnY he d lUnd

 Cosmetic Effects

Hedlund’s setlist originally included “If They Had Boobs Eyes”

PHOTO BY MARK RUDOLPH

Accept STALINGRAD

*Get your music from a record store. 55 Find them at www.mymetalclub.com

Unleashed where no life dwells component to it. can you comment on some of the other lyric themes and how they relate to Where No Life Dwells?

Well, we have made many different lyrics over the years. Many of the anti-Christian type lyrics. The impotency of Christ has been a major topic also on Where No Life Dwells. I think we grew up with that from day one. Also, some of the gore-type lyrics in the scene back then were an inspiration to some lyrics. It was death metal the way it started back then. We just mixed it into our style and kept on creating from there. So, I guess we really had a few different topics. schultz: There were a lot of subjects and themes back then. And [they] actually have always been on every record, except for the last couple ones, which have had a bit of a theme to them. But it was pretty mixed; a lot of anti-Christian, as well as antisocial, themes. Like, for example, “A Life Beyond” [from Shadows in the Deep], which has always been a bit of a personal favorite for me. hedlund:

how much input did you have on the Axel hermann cover? i think it’s pretty fitting. the silver ink was a nice touch, too.

We asked him for a certain feeling to it, and it came out good, I think. I don’t recall too much about the actual process, though. schultz: I can’t really recall. But I believe it was a rather good process. I do remember seeing drafts and making changes and so on. It did, in any case, turn out good with the feeling we wanted. måsgArd: We had a good communication doing that cover. I think we actually were at the Century Media office looking at the first painting in Axel’s studio, and were very happy with the direction it was going. In the end, he captured how we wanted it to look. hedlund:

Why did unleashed go to Woodhouse studios in germany rather than stay in stockholm and use, say, sunlight studios?

We really needed to get our own sound going back then, so we figured it was best we tried something that the other bands from Sweden had not already tried. I think it was a pretty good choice, thinking back on it. schultz: We definitely wanted to get away from the Sunlight Sound of the time as yet another way of making sure we got our own sound and style. And Woodhouse was available to the label, so we decided to go with it. Turned out very good, as far as I see it. I’m quite proud of it. lindgren: Woodhouse was our record company Century Media’s idea. But we thought it was a good idea because we wanted to record anywhere hedlund:

We spent a lot of time just drinking and being rowdy. Chaos in the streets, more or less. A gang of metalheads roaming around with tape recorders and beer.

 Wasted Years

The all-access remnants of Unleashed’s fuzzy memories

a nd e Rs sChUlTZ except in Sunlight, where every band sounded the same. I don’t [mean to] say those bands sounded bad, [but] we just wanted to find our own sound. And to this day I don’t regret it. I actually think we should have recorded all our Unleashed albums there. I won’t say this album has a great sound, but for what we were at the time and for this music, it’s good; and most of all, we didn’t follow the Stockholm or Florida sound. did you have a production blueprint for Where No Life Dwells? Production jobs on records that you wanted to emulate, for example? schultz: Not really. We were not very experienced at the time. And in some ways had no idea what we were doing! [Laughs] No, really, of course, we had ideas of sounds we wanted and a general idea of how we wanted it to turn out, but not much more than that. We just went with it as we did with most things. More feeling than skill in a lot of ways. But that makes it honest, and I would not change it.

What was your time like at Woodhouse studios? Any fun stories, or was it all work and no play?

It was a lot of fun, of course. Some of the days after we had recorded, we had loads of parties with the guys from Rock Hard magazine in Germany. I still recall those parties as being absolutely amazing. We had a blast for sure. But the recording process was, of course, a priority. schultz: There was definitely a lot of play. Obviously, the recordings were the priority, but hedlund:

we went out at night and partied quite hard around the rock clubs and bars of Dortmund. I can’t remember if it was during the Where No Life Dwells recording or at an earlier time, we saw Demolition Hammer play at a club and hung out with those guys and partied. There were some great times, in any case! måsgArd: We had a good time in Woodhouse, I recall. A lot of work, of course, but also some fun. We went to the local rock bar occasionally and one night we had forgot—lost?—the key to the friend’s place where we lived and had to smash the window to get in. He was surprised when he got back. lindgren: Just being in a studio outside Sweden recording your first full-length album was one of the coolest things in our lives. I’ll guess it’s the same for everyone from that generation [before Internet and home studios]. It was like a dream come true. We didn’t have much studio time, so there wasn’t time for that rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle like on a tour. We slept on the floor in an apartment in Dortmund. Every early morning, Waldemar picked us up in his small car and we drove to the Woodhouse for 30 minutes or whatever it was. One of the nights, we also played a show in Dortmund with Demolition Hammer. I remember we all had neck and back pain from headbanging the rest of the days we were in the studio after that. I think we had like seven days in the studio. Don’t get me wrong—we had a lot of laughs—but we had to stay kind of focused all the time.

Unleashed where no life dwells

Waldemar was a great guy and helped us a lot. I guess the only big argument was when he wanted us to have click bass drums like Pantera. We had to stop him. Even Siggi [Bemm] the studio owner said, “No.” A smaller argument was when Siggi said we couldn’t use the acoustic intro I made up in the studio because it wasn’t played properly. We, or I, didn’t care. We wanted a short acoustic intro like Kreator’s short acoustic intro for Pleasure to Kill. Unfortunately, I have a big bad memory as well from that studio session. I heard that one of my closest friends, Pelle [a.k.a. Dead from Morbid, Mayhem], had killed himself. So, from being very happy to be in a studio recording your first album, this was a big setback. I got the message after the recording was done, but we were still in Germany waiting for mastering the album or something like that. Actually, I first thought it was a false rumor. I didn’t believe or realize it until I went back to Sweden. I guess it was a sign. Where No Life Dwells was recorded and Dead had killed himself. Pelle himself would have laughed. Pelle R.I.P. What do you remember about your first u.s. tour with entombed and morbid Angel? or was that the european jaunt? i distinctly recall you playing the michigan deathfest.

We did both Europe and the USA with Morbid Angel back then. An amazing couple of tours. Many good memories. And, of course, too many drinks and almost never a shower in sight. I think I showered two or three times a month on that very European tour. Lovely!

hedlund:

Johnny and me hated everything. We didn’t care. Fuck the world.

F R ed RIK lInd G Re n schultz: I do actually recall one of those early U.S. tours getting mixed into a festival of sorts, so that must be the one. Well, we actually did a tour with Morbid [Angel] and Entombed in Europe as well, but the U.S. tour was first. Regardless, both of those tours were amazing! Let loose a bunch of young Swedish metalheads on a nightliner and you can expect chaos! [Laughs] So many weird and crazy times and, of course, brilliant shows! måsgArd: That tour was a blast! That much I remember, but I can’t remember Michigan Deathfest. It was really cool to do a U.S. tour. We shared a nightliner with Entombed and it was six weeks of party. We did two European and one U.S. tour with Morbid Angel that year. Recorded the album in April. We also did a tour with Bolt Thrower and one with Cancer, so that was a busy year for us.

When Where No Life Dwells was released, did you think it would matter 20-plus years later?

Yes, I did. But I am kind of happy our warriors care more for the new stuff since that is what keeps us going. The younger fans don’t have the same experience of the older records, so we

hedlund:

have to play more new stuff than old these days. But I am good with that. It’s how it should be. schultz: I don’t know, to be honest. In those days, [I] personally, at least, didn’t have much interest in the future. I really never thought along those lines at all. We were doing our thing and just going for it. As we still do, but nowadays as a grown-up—sort of—I do have a sense of the future. måsgArd: I remember listening to the finished product after the recording and thinking this is good stuff that will leave a mark. And it’s cool that it still matters. lindgren: Didn’t think about it back then. We didn’t care. We loved metal and just wanted to kick ass. Playing metal, getting drunk, headbanging and listening to music. What do you make of bands and fans telling you Where No Life Dwells was inﬂuential to them, whether personally or musically?

I am, of course, very happy about that. It was a rough time back then, but we did all we could to get our music out to the warriors. I think we got out just in the right time of things. When we introduced the Viking traditions and values into death metal, I was pretty sure we had the right vibe of things. Since we toured so much, we also got to meet a lot of people instantly and got told we were making something really solid. A fantastic feeling even to this day. There is nothing better than hearing what people have to say about the new album, and especially when they scream along to the choruses.

hedlund:

CRADLE OF FILTH

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Unleashed where no life dwells schultz: It’s a great honor, certainly. As I mentioned previously, personally having the feeling that when we did that album, we were just going balls-out doing our thing, not really caring about anything else, what anyone thought or anything like that. And really working our asses off. It was no easy life, that’s for sure. But then hearing that it actually mattered and influenced people is fantastic. måsgArd: Of course, it’s very nice to have bands and people coming up to you and say that they have been inspired by Where No Life Dwells, or that it was the first death metal album they bought and telling stories like when they listen to it and bang their heads off. Or making love to their girlfriends. [Laughs] Great!

looking back on Where No Life Dwells, is there anything you’d change? i recall when Shadows in the Deep was released, you criticized the album’s lack of tempo variety.

I guess that’s pretty accurate. But looking back at it now, I’d rather make a brand new album than spend time on changing an older one. It had its time and it should be that way. We still play songs live from that album, and are happy about how it came out for the time. Hail, Odin! schultz: I wouldn’t change a thing. Never. At the time Shadows came out, we were really happy with it, and for sure I have a hard time saying which I prefer just looking at the songs, production and all that. But just for being the first, and for all the experiences and craziness that came with those days, I have to say that Where No Life Dwells has a special place in my heart, definitely! To me, it’s just fucking perfect. lindgren: Haven’t heard the album for years— maybe passed-out drunk—but of course there is. I’m proud of the album. Was back then, at least. Yes, it could’ve been more aggressive and doomy, but it’s not about fine art. It’s about the finest art: metal. Love it or hate it, because we don’t care. A hedlund:

Dead Forever

Where No Life Dwells cover artist Axel Hermann walks us through the utter dark by Chris Dick What do you remember about painting the cover for Where No Life Dwells? Axel hermann: Actually, I did not listen to any music of the band beforehand. I think it was done at the time I designed the [Night of the] Stormrider piece for Iced Earth. Maybe that theme did project itself a little. I do not really recall. Anyway, it was done without any sketches or concept. I just started. Purely airbrushing. The rest developed itself during the work process. An icy, desolated and empty environment, suitable for projection and free interpretation. The tiny figure was added after finishing the artwork. Just to have some sort of center detail. I think it was a request by the band. What really upgraded the cover was the transparent silver-ish layer that was added by the printer. it was a commissioned piece, right? i gather the back-and-forth between you and the band helped the final piece solidify. Not really. As stated, it was a spontaneous illustration. Like most of the stuff I did back then. What mediums did you use for the Where No Life Dwells cover? Airbrush only. Those were the days when this kind of technique was highly requested. No masking film or any other tools. Just a white plain cardboard and off I went. What was the size of the original piece? 42” x 31”.

i’m curious how arrangements were made back then. You were like century media’s in-house cover artist. At least that was the perception. The first four or five years, I definitely was. Then on and off until 1999. Robert Kampf and I were already friends back then, so that I had my own little studio within the Century Media offices. In that way, we had a very close and effective line of communication. Helped a lot to get things done pleasantly, because we both had/have very high standards of what artwork should be like. Since I had the luck (and advantage) of being around when the whole death metal scene came into existence (at least on my radar screen), I somehow grew into it. That does not actually mean that my entire musical taste was evolving around that style of music—I am a KISS fan first and foremost—but this segment of heavy metal absolutely mirrored my style of painting and my inner turmoil and personal anger at that time. Actually, listening to Asphyx, for example, calmed me down pretty good. looking back on the cover of Where No Life Dwells, what do you make of it? it’s been 21 years now. I did not like the artwork for a couple of years. But that’s my usual perception of my work anyway. All could have been done way better, etc. I tend to relate more to the negative aspects and technical mistakes of my artwork. Always analyzing and criticizing. Took me a lot of years to be pleased or fond of my own work. But it gets better. [Laughs]

DEATH IS THE ONLY MORTAL

THE ACACIA STRAIN DETHKLOK DETHALBUM III

EX DEO Caligvla

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The Key

Not record #87 on this list, but a handy numerical guide to the album art featured in Mark Rudolph’s cover illustration

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