Death metal
Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. It typically employs heavily distorted and low-tuned guitars, played with techniques such as palm muting and tremolo picking; deep growling vocals; aggressive, powerful drumming, featuring double kick and blast beat techniques; minor keys or atonality; abrupt tempo, key, and time signature changes; and chromatic chord progressions. The lyrical themes of death metal may include slasher film-style violence, political conflict, religion, nature, philosophy, true crime and science fiction.
Quotes about death metal
- Thrash and grind shared a common love of speed and aggression, and a number of bands fell comfortably into the middle ground between the two genres. Bands such as Autopsy (band), Entombed and Bolt Thrower combined grindcore's extreme pace and growled vocals with more complex song structures. This amalgamation of styles gave birth to death metal.
- Owen Duffy of The Guardian [1]
- This kind of music helps people get through negative things. I mean, you're taking something negative and turning it into something positive by making it into music -- instead of actually going out and doing something violent. There's plenty of ways to turn things around, and that is what death metal did for me. [...] It got me through alot of negative things in my life -- it was always there for me.
- The metal comes just from a resentment of crap being called metal. That's what drove the metal to be as heavy as it was and the lyrical content just had to step up to the music. It had to fit that angry disposition. There's no shortage of things to be pissed at in the world and people can pick their poison.
- Steve Asheim of Deicide, as quoted by Owen Thomson of The Syndey Morning Herald (December 1, 2006) [3]
- What makes death metal so powerful to many fans is its versatility. It can blend itself well into any other genre of metal seamlessly; it has had a part in the formation and inspiration of many black metal grindcore, doom metal and experimental bands across the globe.
- Death metal exists in a void somewhere between high and low art. On one hand, the musicians playing this style are often world class, studying their instruments to an extreme level of virtuosity. It’s not unusual for extreme metal musicians to have extensively studied classical music (see Gorguts, Fleshgod Apocalypse) or jazz (see Atheist, Cynic), nor is it odd to find acts with an interest in philosophy, history and mythology, or politics and social criticism. However, more often than not, those skills and interests are translated into songs that typically deal with tearing flesh and destroying Christians. It’s music for people that appreciate artistic craft, but also like B-horror movies. Since it falls under the massive umbrella of “popular music,” many would argue that death metal can’t qualify as high art, but with its frequent use of advanced compositional techniques and experimental songwriting, it might be the closest thing the non-classical, non-jazz world has to high-culture music.