DEATH METAL DISSECTION: An Introduction to Death Metal

Introduction

Okay lets just get into the meat and potatoes of today's blog, Death Metal. This genre of music has probably been my most listened to genre of this year because it’s just so good. So good that I bought new strings and did some modifications to my guitar to put it in the dropped tuning to play this kind of music, and it is a bit of a pain in the ass to tune because of the floating bridge on it. 

Sidenote–if you’re reading this and have no idea what I’m talking about, I've been planning on doing another blog on the setup and explanation of what goes into fine tuning, cleaning, tone tweaking, and other such particulars that goes into guitar maintenance or just the technical know how of the instrument.

[From Sweetwater]

 But enough of that, I know what you're here for and that’s that. In the last blog that I talked about music, I covered what is now one of my favorite bands of all time, the Florida death metal band, Death–you could probably guess where the term “death metal” came from just because of the name. However, I already did a blog about the band Death so instead what I am going to do is give my early exposure to death metal and how I've slowly gotten to go deeper into the different bands and subgenres along with some of the avenues that I have yet to explore within the wide range that death metal encompasses.

DISCLAIMER:  A lot of what I am saying in this blog would make a lot more sense if you went and read my blog “All of Death” because I do use that band as a point of reference, but if you want to go into this organically, that's completely fine too.

[From my blog]

The very first album that I listened to that was a death metal record was Symbolic by Death, which you should of course go and give a listen not only because it is a great introduction to death metal but I think that that album has some of the best production quality in traditional death metal, whereas some others lack in quality (not in musicality or technicality) as the tracks often get muddied in the mixing and mastering. This is due to the unbelievably dense soundscape that most, if not all, of Death Metal is–featuring drop tuned guitars to give the melodies a more sinister feel, paired with gut wrenching, growling vocals, concussive drums and a deep baseline to lay as a foundation for all of this extreme music. Since the guitar, the vocals, the drums and bass are all being pushed to the max, to an extreme, it takes some serious skill in order to not only play this music cleanly and in time, often at rapid speeds, but also it takes a good producer to make sure that everything is able to be heard, contributing to the overall sound. Due to the low and growling distortion of the vocals, producers mixed these vocals like how they would another guitar instead of how they would normal vocals. All of this is to say that the deeper you get into death metal, the more you have to tune your ear a little lower to appreciate the rhythm and reason behind it, so to someone where this genre is completely foreign may sound different to someone who has already been exposed to more music like this. 

[From Wikipedia]

Must Listen Death Metal Records

So, to FINALLY get into some of the albums that I've listened to–sorry for the long introduction–I wanted to start off with a subgenre of Death Metal that takes virtuosity to a completely different level and were, in my opinion, some of the most impressive musicianship can be found. The band Necrophagist has put out two of the most iconic Technical Death Metal records of all time, and I can say that the type of production quality that both of these records have is just mind boggling. However, even though their first album Onset of Putrefaction is groovy and downright disgusting, their second album Epitaph serves as a benchmark for the utmost quality in tech death (Technical Death Metal) production. With virtuosic melodies and playing that can only be transcribed with nothing but the utmost surgical precision, makes the sound of this album glide through your ears like a scalpel. Something that serves as an untouchable apex for many aspiring guitarists, a record that you just have to listen to experience.    

[From Wikipedia]

I want you to think of death metal–or really any music genre–like an evolution tree where certain animals evolve to favor certain characteristics that benefit their chances of survival. Death metal has evolved from bands focusing on certain characteristics from the pioneers of the genre, like Death, to make certain songs more melodic, brutal, technical or dissonant, and the genre even comes down to the type of imagery or lyrics that are used as well, but for now I'll just focus on the musicality of it. Like how I explained in my review of Deaths discography, even within the progression of their records you can see how lead guitarist Chuck Schuldiner refined his playing to be more technical by working with odd time signatures and tempo changes, which is something that is kind of unique to death metal (but I'm sure you could find examples in other music as well). 

So to illustrate the technical development in the instrumentals of the music I want to give you three albums that show the sound of old-school death metal and then one that is highly progressive in its instrumentals. 

First, is the Canadian death metal band Gorguts’ 1991 album, Considered Dead, which embodies the more traditional old school death metal sound with the growling vocals and blast beat drums which is a term for drumming in rapid succession, different from drum fills you'd see in traditional metal. To describe this record is just bone chilling and brutal that emulates this sense of dread and disgust, which truly makes it a staple of old school death metal. 

[From Wikipedia]

Next up is Autopsy’s debut album Severed Survival, and a little fun fact about this album is that it took inspiration from a short story by Stephen King called Survivor type, that follows a drug trafficking surgeon who gets stranded on an island willing to do anything to survive, even if he has to eat himself—really cool story that you should check out if you've got the time. The special thing about this album is that it has a much slower tempo, almost like doom metal at times, however it still has that death metal aggressiveness that gives it a more haunting sound than anything else which is why I decided to put this record in here. 

[From Wikipedia]

THIS LAST ONE IS AMONG MY FAVORITES! I love this album so much and it has such a unique sound to it making it my favorite old school death metal record of all time, plus the opening track “Infected” has one of the nastiest introductory solos of all time. Cause of Death by Obituary is an undeniable classic in the realm of death metal with a slimy guitar tone that just oozes with pure malice. That and the vocals are just so unique even for a death metal growl, where lead vocalist John Trady makes the vowels in his singing very pronounced which just fits so well with the tone of this album. Again, a MUST listen if you want to get into death metal or even if you just want to hear an objectively good metal album. 

[From Wikipedia]

Okay now that we're done with some of the old school I want to move on to a bit of an interesting album from the genre, which I can only describe as something that is an acquired taste of mine but for very good reason. 

Gorguts’ third album, Obscura, made in 1998, was a revolutionary pillar in the technical / progressive death metal scene in what at first listen, seems like just notes haphazardly thrown together however there is an underlying complex rhythmic structure that intentionally creates this chaotic and dissonant sound of obscurity, setting a new, atonal, weirder level of musicianship within the genre. On first listen, I had no idea what the hell I was listening to but it was just one of those albums that you need to replay in order to just get into the groove of it, hence why I call it an acquired taste as many people who were fans of their first two albums, weren’t so keen on Obscura. After a few re-listens I could really appreciate its unique sound and odd structure, as it was something that was just completely foreign to me, which I really liked.

[From Trebel Zine]

LAST BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST–trust me I've got a banger to end this off on– is Cryptopsy’s record, None So Vile, which has some of the coolest album cover art in metal. This album sounds animalistically brutal with heavy breakdowns and sick isolated bass lines like in their song “Slit Your Guts” that add an accent that you just won't get to see in a lot of other bands, or at least the ones I've listened to (I am still on the hunt for new music constantly). Moreover, this crushing wall of sound that envelopes you when listening to any song off of "None So Vile" is guaranteed to make you groove at one point or another.   

[From Wikipedia]

There are still a lot more albums that I want to go over from the genre, but these are some of the ones that stood out to me the most and it was really hard between picking through a select few of many great albums that I've listened to. As I go deeper into the genre, I know a lot of people who can get pretentious about the different genres and classifications of this kind of music so I do my best to get everything accurate, but it's not the end of the world if you don't know how the subgenre was formed, after all I'm just doing this for fun. 

Some bands that ARE on my checklist that are in the genre are Dying Fetus, Mortician, Carcass, Intestine Ballism, Diecide, Sanguisugabogg, Party Cannon, Cannibal Corpse, Cynic and a bunch of other good ones that I cant name off the top of my head for the life of me but I look forward to it!