Death Metal Facts

Origins and early development

Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music that emerged during the mid-1980s. It typically employs heavily distorted and low-tuned guitars played with techniques such as palm muting and tremolo picking, deep growling vocals, and aggressive drumming. Bands such as Venom, Celtic Frost, Slayer, and Kreator were important influences on the genre's creation, and groups like Possessed, Death, Necrophagia, Obituary, Autopsy, and Morbid Angel are often considered pioneers of the genre.

Evolution or diversification

Since then, death metal has diversified, spawning several subgenres. Melodic death metal combines death metal elements with those of the new wave of British heavy metal. Technical death metal is a complex style with uncommon time signatures, atypical rhythms, and unusual harmonies and melodies. Death-doom combines deep growled vocals and double-kick drumming of death metal with the slow tempos and melancholic atmosphere of doom metal. Deathgrind, goregrind, and pornogrind mix death metal complexity with grindcore intensity speed and brevity. Deathcore combines death metal with metalcore traits, and death 'n' roll fuses growled vocals and highly distorted detuned guitar riffs with elements of 1970s hard rock and heavy metal.

Cultural or musical significance

Building from the musical structure of thrash metal and early black metal, death metal gained more media attention in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a popular genre. Influential early acts and albums helped define the sound and inspired subsequent bands, and niche record labels like Combat Earache and Roadrunner began to sign death metal bands at a rapid rate.