Swedish death metal

Swedish death metal is a death metal music scene developed in Sweden. Many Swedish death metal bands are associated with the melodic death metal movement, thus giving Swedish death metal a different sound from other variations of death metal. Unlike American death metal groups, the first Swedish bands were rooted in punk rock. Although Norway is known for its quantity of black metal, Gothenburg in Sweden has a large melodic death metal scene, while Stockholm is known for its more raw death metal scene.

History

Precursors

Unlike American groups, the Swedish death metal scene's earliest originators were influenced by punk rock, especially the D-beat hardcore punk scene.Bathory, who would subsequently become a primary influence for the black metal scene, were a pivotal group in Swedish extreme metal. In the early 1990s, two death metal scenes emerged in Gothenburg and Stockholm. The first wave of "Swedish death metal" consisted of the bands Morbid and Nihilist, who fragmented later into Entombed, Dismember and Unleashed. Many of these bands used the trademark Tomas Skogsberg/Sunlight Studios "buzzsaw" guitar tone. It was created by using heavily detuned electric guitars (usually C# standard or lower), a maxed out Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal pedal, sometimes in combination with a single guitar through a Boss DS-1 Distortion pedal. The originator of this guitar sound was Nihilist guitarist Leffe Cuzner, though it was evolved and altered over the years. Newer bands playing in the "old school" Swedish style include Bloodbath,Paganizer and Repugnant. According to Stewart Mason of AllMusic, the "increasingly melodic" style of Swedish death metal combines the post-hardcore aggression and guttural vocals of black metal with melodic and technically proficient guitar lines.

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 and screams, aggressive, powerful drumming featuring double kick or 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 invoke slasher film-stylized violence,religion (sometimes Satanism), occultism, Lovecraftian horror, nature, mysticism, mythology, philosophy, science fiction, and politics, and they may describe extreme acts, including mutilation, dissection, torture, rape, cannibalism, and necrophilia.

Building from the musical structure of thrash metal and early black metal, death metal emerged during the mid-1980s. Bands such as Venom, Celtic Frost, Slayer, and Kreator were important influences on the genre's creation.Possessed and Death, along with bands such as Obituary,Autopsy and Morbid Angel, are often considered pioneers of the genre. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, death metal gained more media attention as popular genre niche record labels like Combat, Earache, and Roadrunner, began to sign death metal bands at a rapid rate.

Death metal (disambiguation)

Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal.

Death metal may also refer to:

Death Metal (Dismember album)

Death Metal is the fourth album by Swedish death metal band, Dismember. The fourth track, "Let The Napalm Rain", opens with a sample from the movie Apocalypse Now.

Track listing

Personnel