Heavy Metal Bands

"Sepultura helped put South America on the heavy metal radar as thrash was still in its infancy. The band’s first two records toe the line between thrash and black metal, but they came into their own on the genre-defining ‘Beneath the Remains.’"

"Override the overture Behold the overwhelming power Trampled and fucking mangled By the hordes of terror The process of death is our fate to be From the skies blood drips like rain Tell me how I sufferm tell me how I'll die My arms stretched out in eternal pain The life that we knew drowned in the stream of death The agony within tears my worthless being Crushed by the blasphemous horror inside Enter a world beyond this fucking global tomb Mesmerized by the visions of things past and gone My death arrives My fate to be it must be done Laid to rest Shut my eyes Live no more Die a countless times To the burial ground Our flesh are bound Our souls will live on With the powers beyond At the end, I'm still so cold inside Once again, I would like to share my memories of life Show me the realm where nothing dies If such a place exists, please guide my eyes"

"Deicide’s riffs are monstrously listenable for something so blasphemously eardrum-grinding, and the straight-from-hell vocals are entertaining for the seasoned listener but will still scare the shit out of your neighbors — and that’s why we all love death metal to begin with, right?"

"Slowly slicing your body Wondering what's inside A psychopath addicted to flesh Now I'm taking your life Hacking through your organs Constantly watching your eyes I gotta see in your mind What happens when you die Bleed for me, Let me see you suffer Die for me, I love to hear you scream Dreaming of a death so violent Sanity is draining from me I'm forced to murder and slaughter By the visions in my head Laughiung as you die Please make me stop If blood is what it takes Then I'll just let it flow"

"Life has no meaning, unyielding obsession Grasping at strings of a life I once knew Death by my own hands, achieving objective Blade to my throat, I calmly greet death In Hell I burn, my faith is sustained In Hell I burn again In Hell I burn, no questions remain In Hell I burn for Satan Opened eyes dream, unheavenly torture Raping the world of the dead Burning in Hell and viewing the unseen Satisfying feasting of flesh [...] Master it's true My promise I have kept Fulfillment of the prophecies The deity is dead"

"Burning I bleed, unholy incision Mark of the beast, behold the trifixion"

"Trouble are much more than representatives of [doom metal] and might be one of the best, unsung metal bands in the United States."

"As bands like Motörhead, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden sharpened metal’s edge, ramped up the speed or took it to epic new places, Witchfinder General maintained a Sabbathy groove in the new age, thanks to guitarist Phil Cope."

"Candlemass are synonymous with the doom metal genre and, in particular, for coining the phrase "epic doom metal”."

"If there is a hell, Deicide are destined to become its permanent house band in a move not dissimilar to Celine Dion's long-standing gig at Caesar's Palace."

"Pentagram are one of the most enduring and influential underground bands in metal history with a trademark doom-laden style that's often compared to Black Sabbath. Laudatory reviews were abundant for 1987's Day of Reckoning, 1993's Relentless, and 1994's Be Forewarned, and they were bolstered by Pentagram's relentless touring and intense performances. Despite near constant lineup changes, singer Bobby Liebling kept the band alive."

"As I become one with the earth My soul has passed the rebirth In this world I leave my flesh to rot No regrets, this is my lot Ashes to ashes Dust to dust Dark recollections of my past life Memories haunt me in black 'n' white Divine death now descends Burning as my existence ends In death I will fall asleep Floating deep From dying heaven To living hell A travel through ancient times Witness only what the dead shall see Walk among the dead As my body's still on my death bed In death I will fall asleep Floating deep From dying heaven To living hell"

"Having been signed to labels with names like United Guttural and Corpse Gristle, it should come as no surprise that Lone Star State death metallers Devourment traffic in the same nihilistic sonic filth as their slam death metal forebears Cannibal Corpse and Suffocation. Despite splitting up and re-forming multiple times since emerging in the mid-'90s, the band has remained at the forefront of the brutal death scene, issuing genre-defining albums like Molesting the Decapitated, Unleash the Carnivore, and Obscene Majesty."

"Turn to drugs to free my mind Just to see what I would find Tabs are great, now ask the drummer Smack my friend is just a bummer"

"The legend goes that during a show with Chicago’s Trouble waaaaay back in the day, Metallica were so envious of guitarists Bruce Franklin and Rick Wartell’s guitar tones that they snuck onstage and wrote down their amp settings for themselves."

"This is music Lucifer would love."

"Deicide are one of the bands that made it easier for me to understand what death metal is. As weird as it may sound, some of their songs are really accessible, with catchy choruses."

"Their influence can be heard on pretty much any death/doom band worth their salt. Winter were always closer to punk in mindset, even if the music was doom, and their sound lives on not only in those who have ripped them off over the years – that list is long – but in guitarist Stephen Flam’s new project, Göden, too, which takes its name from a Winter track and sees Flam play an array of custom-made guitars he co-designed himself."

"Mayhem is arguably the most infamous part of the early Norwegian black metal scene, and although they’re largely known for their violent history, they’ve also produced some bona fide black metal bangers. Case in point: the immensely popular “Freezing Moon” from 1994’s seminal De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas."

"Along with Paradise Lost, New York outfit Winter’s only album Into Darkness helped draw a line for doom between the blues of Sabbath and the more traditional metal leanings of bands like Trouble, and somewhere much, much more grim."

"[Euronymous] had the belief, the more extreme the better, the more unbelievable the better. [...] Then you have someone like Vikernes who comes in and starts taking it at face value, saying, ‘We can’t just talk about this stuff. We’ve got to do it.’ It was the combination of the two of them meeting that pushed things over the edge."

"That’s why we started to wear our hair all black. We were singing about Satan and sadism, and everything that was wrong like torture and stuff like that — the opposite of hanging around at the beach [...] We were looking for perversity and craziness."

"The arrival of Mayhem draws, for many people, a historical line in the sand for black metal. As arguably the first band of the genre’s second wave, here was an outfit who saw black metal as a genre in itself. Where forebears like Bathory, Venom, Hellhammer and Celtic Frost were separate bands doing their thing with very little contact or common ground, Mayhem pulled all these parts together to create something whole."

"[Winter] carried [the] monochrome crust-punk aesthetic [of Amebix] into their musical outlook with a bleaker-than-thou sound heavily informed by the Hellhammer/Celtic Frost paradigm."

"Singing was really hard on his voice. [...] He just wanted to try something with a more traditional metal singer, because he was a huge fan of bands like Iron Maiden, Manowar and bands like that. I don’t think he ever wanted to stop doing Death full time, because he knew how much that band meant to people. But he was ready for a break."

"Suffocation are like the death metal equivalent of an old roller coaster that still makes your stomach drop even though you’ve ridden it hundreds of times and there are plenty of newer rides that are faster and more jarring. If you were following death metal in the early 1990s, when there was a sudden explosion of technical proficiency across the genre, Suffocation’s work since re-forming in 2002 will probably make you nostalgic for that era."

"Although Deep Purple helped lay the foundation for the heavy metal, their consummate musicianship meant they also transcended the genre. Indeed, they began as a progressive rock group with their eyes, unusually, on the singles market. Yet they certainly rocked, as their shows from the earliest days conclusively proved."

"The family tree of musicians and bands that sprouted from Deep Purple is truly amazing. The group, which spawned the likes of David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes, is one of the true pioneers of the hard rock and heavy metal sound."

"One can only imagine the look on the faces of Peaceville Records’ staff as they hit ‘play’ on Darkthrone’s A Blaze In The Northern Sky album for the first time and the razorblade riff that opens Kathaarian Life Code bled out. They had signed the Norwegian band as a death metal outfit, and their Soulside Journey debut had seen them doing decent numbers and gathering a good level of respect for their technical heaviness. And then, drummer Fenriz recalled later, “They called me up and said, ‘What the fuck is this?’ And I said, ‘That’s fuckin’ black metal, man.’” Harsh, dark, cold and primitive, it was unexpected. More to the point, it was unlike anything else you could hear at the time. Fenriz will split hairs that there’s still death metal riffs in there, but it’s like saying there’s chicken in a nugget – it’s there somewhere, but only nominally. It has the distinction of being the first ‘true’ Norwegian black metal album from the country’s notorious ‘Black Circle'."

"Diamond Head may not be known to casual heavy metal fans, but they were part of the new wave of British heavy metal (NWOBHM) and influenced the early sounds of Metallica and Megadeth."

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"Very few metal bands can claim to be as influential as the power trio Venom. Taking the rumble and speed of Motorhead and warping into something more sinister altogether, the band’s Satanic themes and wild image were uninhibited savagery. ‘Welcome to Hell’ changed the metal landscape forever in 1981, followed by ‘Black Metal’ and ‘At War With Satan.’ Giving rise to what became the first wave of black metal, Venom’s impact helped usher in extreme metal, proving attitude could supersede technical abilities if done properly."

"When Geordie trio Venom coined the term black metal for the title of their 1982 second album, it was a way of marking themselves out as one louder than the rest of the rising wave of metal bands going faster, harder and noisier. With more volume than Motörhead, more speed than Priest, and more diabolic imagery than Black Sabbath visiting a Hammer Horror set, they’d already set up business to the horned one with their 1981 debut Welcome To Hell."

"Take her down now Don’t want to see her face Blistered and burnt Can’t hide my disgrace"

"The drummer lost an arm and kept going. That’s metal as you know what."

"The recorded works of the Long Island death metal quintet were largely responsible for the word ‘brutal’ entering the patois of the extreme metal fan, stylized in the now passé forum-friendly format ‘br00tal’. Some modes of death metal require the guitars to tune down and rot. Others require a pedantic noise gate to trim it into the physical ideal of an über-metal rhythm tone. What Terrance Hobbs and Doug Cerrito did was split the difference, finding a way of making sure the technicality was not lost in the mix while retaining the whiff of gore. They could switch things up, too. Tracks like Breeding the Spawn defined the Suffo style, throwing chum for the slam heads and writing with the full knowledge it would ignite the pit – that mid-section breakdown on Breeding was seminal. The likes of Torn into Enthrallment showed another side to them, and proved they had the songwriting nous to sit at the table with death metal’s elite."

"Suffocation are globally recognized innovators of death metal [and] became extremely influential in the thrash/grind community. Since the 1990s, their massive influence on the genre came from pioneering the balance between brutal and technical sounds now commonly heard in 21st century death metal. After several demos and singles, 1991's now-classic Effigy of the Forgotten influenced an entire generation in death metal and grindcore circles."

"[Suffocation] always brings us the kind of heavy music ideal to break someone's nose in the slam pit."

"When Suffocation released their ‘Effigy of the Forgotten’ debut, they reigned in both brutal and technical death metal, all while other acts around the world were trying to put their signature stamp on the still young genre. Incredibly complex arrangements and constantly shifting time signatures were the hallmarks of a band well beyond their years with Frank Mullen’s uncompromising guttural barks becoming the standard technique. Suffocation excel best onstage where no band can match their unmitigated heaviness and wanton brutality."

"Suffocation might just be the best of the [New York death metal bands]. Since 1988, save for a little half decade break in the late 90s, they’ve been one of death metal’s most consistent bands. Not only do they have some mindboggling technical riffs and one of the genre's most instantly recognisable vocalists in Frank Mullen, their use of breakdowns was hugely influential in the creation of the deathcore movement... we’ll let you decide if that’s a positive or a negative."

"We had no idea what we were doing was going to become such a big thing. So many bands were in the studio at the same time as us. How the hell could I have presumed that it would be my band who would be the lasting name? We weren’t trying to be the next Iron Maiden or the next this or that. We just wanted to do what we enjoyed. You had a band like [fellow Geordie NWOBHM outfit] Tygers Of Pan Tang always dropping Purple references; you know, ‘We want to be the next Deep Purple.’ Well, Venom never did that. We never said that. We said, ‘We are now, we are new, we are Venom."

"Def Leppard sounds so fuckin' great live because there's so much space in their music — kicks, snare, boom — and stuff really moves and it all jives with the others. It's exciting, and it sounds great, and you can sing the song. It's not overdone."

"Every song that gets written is filtered through our own lens and our life experiences. [...] You can’t help it that whatever glasses you’re wearing are going to filter how you look at history."

"If we were using the music of the local area here, it would sound nothing like a Nile album. In a way it’s a form of escapism. There are a lot of Eastern modalities and tonalities adapted into the guitar playing, but it’s not purely authentic because it can’t be. In the same way that the soundtrack for a Mummy movie or whatever is not all ancient stuff from 5000 years ago, it’s music that puts you in that mindset, which is a different thing. Are you scoring a Hollywood movie, or being a musical preservation society? We’re a metal band, so we lean towards the ‘Hollywood making a horrific Ancient Egypt movie’ [approach]."

"We did kind of leave the religious themes alone, because we were very passionate about that for the first number of records. And once Unholy Cult came out, that was where we branched off. That's where the shift happened, 'cause that was right after 9/11, as you know! I saw it, I went down there, I had family that got killed in the towers, and it was a life-changing event in a lot of ways. And I knew at that point that things would never be the same, in our country or in the world. And that's where the shift happened, and we started to focus more on the darker side of humanity. Which we did already with the religious themes, of course, because that was a very dark part of our history. I mean not to knock anybody who's very passionate about their religion, but in my personal point of view, I've always thought of it as a very controlling and negative force. It serves as a division in our world, it divides people, just like so many other things! So that's where we are, and that's where that shift started, away from religion and into something more socially relevant and looking more deeply at ourselves."

"When we touch on religion with this record [...] I think it’s done in a new and fresh way [...] religion is still a big force in the world, it’s not something I care for, but I see how it impacts people. It’s something we are always fond of exploring, that mindset and how it affects people, and also the institutions themselves and the corruption within and the horrible things done in the name of religion [...] I have a lot of friends and we know a lot of people and fans we’ve met over the years who are pretty blunt and say “Hey, I’m not down with the anti-religious thing, but I get it” – I think they appreciate our take on it because we don’t attack so much the individual spiritualism that people find – we attack more the institutions [...] I respect anybody’s right to believe and feel and listen to and follow or do whatever they want. My only problem is when that creeps into my world and religion becomes a thorn in my side when I’m not a religious person at all. When religion works into how laws are passed and how it dictates certain things in our society – that should have zero place in my world and any who chooses not to believe’s world."

"This comes from a guitar lesson I had with (legendary shredder) Rusty Cooley where we were dissecting two concepts. The first one would be ‘Nephren-ka’; during the years that we were doing the early Nile songs, there was no scale that actually fit those songs, so we had to make what’s called a synthetic scale, which is basically it’s not a scale that exists, but you need one, so you make it up that’s specific to those purposes. So a lot of those songs on that album – Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka – use the ‘Nephren-ka’ scale. Because we made it up, necessity is a mother of invention, the ‘Nephren-ka’ scale is a six-note scale. It’s not seven. It’s only got six notes. And it’s kind of like a Locrian mode with no sixth degree. The other part of this story, the ‘Pentagrammathion’ part, is yet another lesson I had with Rusty Cooley, where if you take any five-note scale, through the magic of how those notes are laid out, if you take out any one of those notes, maybe it’s this Note, maybe it’s this note, maybe it’s this note. You’re left with a four-note scale, which just happens to be a quartal minor, 11th chord, no matter which one of these notes you take out, which is kind of fascinating. So if you’re left with this four-note chord, if you add back in a fifth note, and it doesn’t have to be the same note that you took out, it could be a different note. Now we got five notes again, but depending on which note you stick back in there, you get an entirely different mode or tonality and a different set of chords that you can derive from this new artificial five-note mode. This is the pentagrammathion, because there are so many possibilities that it’s kind of like having a dial that’s got five points, and you can spin it around and wherever you spin it and add something random in, you get something new. That concept of yeah, it just changes every time. So ‘The Pentagrammathion Of Nephren-ka’ is where we took the ‘Nephren-ka’ scale and put it inside this pentagram wheel and spun it around and see what chords and tonalities and melodies are derived from, wherever the five-pointed dial ended up."

"Not many people will argue against the case that Emperor are the greatest black metal band of all time, or that they raised the genre into new realms of art. In The Nightside Eclipse amplified black metal’s invocation of otherness as it imprinted the inhuman on an immeasurably vast and majestic canvas. [...] Emperor tore open new spaces that drew in innumerable voyagers in their wake."

"For budding death metal fans, there are a series of vocal thresholds to cross before truly becoming a fan of the genre. One might start with the basic shout of Death’s Chuck Schuldiner, graduate into the rasp of Carcass’s Jeff Walker, and eventually enjoy the standard “cookie monster” approach most associated with death metal. But I don’t think you can honestly appreciate death metal until you’ve learned to love Lord Worm. There have been very few frontman in detah metal history who have sounded quite as inhuman. Many harsh vocalists try to sound demonic, but Lord Worm is the only man (besides maybe Demilich’s Antti Boman) who really sounds like he’s from a different world than ours. His array of growls, shrieks, grunts, and howls is unmatched, and he is never intelligible. Those grotesque, Baudelaire-like lyrics of his go to waste if you don’t read along (not that they’re much easier to understand with the words right in front of you. He blatantly skips syllables throughout [None So Vile])."