Heavily influenced by Slayer, Deicide ranks high on the list of important death metal bands and their 1990 debut remains one of the most dedicated-to-evil albums of all time. Singer Glen Benton (the guy with an upside down cross burnt into his forehead) alternately growls and shrieks, sending the high pitches sailing over roiling guitars and the requisite thrubbing of blast beat percussion. "Lunatic Of God's Creation" is one of their signature songs but don't miss "Dead By Dawn," or any of the guitar solos.
The first record the band put out since the tragic death of drummer Vitek Kieltyka in a car wreck, Carnival Is Forever picks up where Decapitated left off in 2007, featuring the vectoring technical death metal the Polish band has been associated with since forming in 1996. The album features a new singer and rhythm section; its overall quality (check the one-two punch of "United" and the title cut for starters) is a testament to founding member Vogg Kieltyka's strength in facing the adversity that befell him when he lost his brother.
These Boston deathcore bullies start out their third album jumping up and down, breaking things, marching in circles with fists flailing, flapping their gums in an unseemly and unfeminist manner at a "Harlot," and even doing a geekily nasal nyah-nyah chant in "Cradle Robber." But beginning with the fourth cut, "Dissolution Ritual," they give David Davidson more guitar-solo room, and against all odds he frequently winds up sounding intricate and tranquil, mining jazz fusion and blues in ways both wanky and wacky -- and, in the brief, chaotic instrumental "Fractal Entity," darn near futuristic.
While it's kind of a bummer to learn Nile gleaned their knowledge of ancient Egypt from the History Channel and not while plundering tombs with Indiana Jones, the attraction of a band that name checks Nephran-Ka and Aat-Ankh-Es-En-Amenti is undeniable. Also any band offering a song called "Chapter For Transforming Into A Snake" clearly deserves special consideration. More importantly, Black Seeds of Vengeance is marked by truly weird chanting and undeniably exotic instrumentations (see "The Black Flame" for one) perfectly woven into traditional, but high quality, death metal moves.
The trudging doom metal elements Autopsy had flirted with since their beginning came to full fruition on Mental Funeral, with tunes marked by levels of slo-mo near those of Saint Vitus. "In the Grip of Winter," for one, almost goes backward at one point. Directly descended from the lo-fi half-tempos of once-obscure doom godfathers Trouble, Autopsy's second full-length is frequently identified as having a major effect on death metal itself, and with the doom explosion of the '00s, it remains relevant, if not downright seminal. "Dead" and "Robbing the Grave" are two more highlights.
Released in 1989, Slowly We Rot brought the rapidly growing Florida death metal scene to new extremes in totally extreme heavy metal extremeness. Singer John Tardy's sub-language howl-gurgle is a big draw here, but the real payoff is the Sabbath-slow, super-phased freak-outs of "Til Death" and the title cut.
Death metal's very first befoulment of the human soul, this landmark album emerged from Orlando in 1987. Essentially pointing the way for countless bands that came after them, Death took the already extreme thrash and speed metal of Slayer and somehow made it even uglier, more brutal and, presumably for any parents whose kids were cranking this with the door shut, more terrifying. And even though Scream Bloody Gore is often cited as the first of its kind, the album remains as vital as what followed it.
French quintet Gojira expand their death/doom combination on this fourth full-length. Pushing metal's blackened boundaries with odd time signatures, reserved double bass, sawing guitars and slow-burning, overcast tracks like "All The Tears," "The Art of Dying" and the 17-minute crusher "The Way of All Flesh," reveals a thought-provoking progression while vocalist Joe Duplantier growls about the inevitably of death.
With their second album, Dutch outfit Pestilence transmogrified into a straight death metal unit. Whereas their debut had shown the trappings of the thrash they started out with, this 1989 seizure was marked by stolid riffage, a serious drop-off in complexity, and alternating gurgly-guttural and harried-nutjob vocals. Years after its release, Consuming Impulse is a perfect artifact of the early death metal era, with both Obituary and Sepultura informing the sound, not to mention cover art that positively screams 1989. Things get fun with "The Trauma."
Consistently boasting an angry brew of confrontational lyrics venomously gurgled over urgent, brooding guitars and technically precise, groove-oriented drums, LoG have become an easy-to-recognize brand. Without entirely abandoning those schematics, Wrath sees some song structure experimentation ("Broken Hands"), moving away from the verse-hook-verse standard ("Set to Fail"), while tightening the overall chops and incorporating outside influences ("Choke Sermon"). The whole package shows off why these guys are America's death metal darlings.
