Yeah, the first 3 Obituary albums were death metal masterpieces: Slowly We Rot, Cause of Death, The End Complete.
They took that patented Chuck Schulinder sound and added a healthy dose of Celtic Frost....

Then along came World Demise........ yuck!!!!
I should have seen the warnings in that godawful "Don't Care" music video, with all the skater-esque bouncing and fingers waving at the camera...... the birth of "nu-death metal".

I do have to admit, the video is goofy.


There's a reason why I stick to the early Death Metal scene.


I think that Death was good right up until their end, but it seems like other bands ended up going downhill later in their career.

All this talk of Schuldiner makes me sad. I think I'm going to listen to this!

I give the Chuck enough listening to that he won't be forgotten at least




Every Death album was a classic, to me at least.

Yeah, well even with Death I have to admit nothing else in their catalogue really gave me that dose of darkness I crave for like Scream Bloody Gore and Leprosy did!!

'Death' was one of the irreplaceable bands, and, I have to say, the only of the old school death metal bands I can stand. Too many of the bands that followed Death just sound generic to my ears these days [guts, gore, rot, dismemberment, all tiresome, juvenile Rawhead and Bloody Bones rubbish], even many of the technical death metal bands which I like a lot better too often are lacking in originality and fresh ideas [Meshuggah and Nile can be quite good most of the time, and Amorphis and Opeth can be sheer genius, haunting you long after you first hear them to the extent that they really embed themselves into your life].

All in all, I'm a doom guy from my early Black Sabbath days onwards, if I have to be rash enough to categorize myself. Lots of good recommendations above, especially Candlemass and Type O Negative, both absolutely essential to any serious cd collection. I'd include the oft-ignored Cathedral to the list.

TON was a very special band especially. A doom band that could knock out an ass-kicking thrash song or two on almost every album they put out, and the makers of some of the best covers of other people's songs I've come across. All this with REAL wit and very clever, literate lyrics--a rarity indeed!

Generally, when it comes to pure death metal, I ONLY like the old school!!!
Back in the late 80s/early 90s, there were loads of bands who always included the dark and doomy aesthetic as an integral part of their music: Incantation, Dismember, Grave, early Amorphis(can't stand anything they did after Elegy), Demigod, etc.

I just really can't bear the sounds of triggered drums, metalcore chugging, and pop-music level production values that became trendy from the late 90s onward.

I guess when it comes to ALL my music, I tend to hate the modern era: metal, goth, industrial, or otherwise.

Good music, in my taste, should sound as if it were recorded in a dusty, pitch-black graveyard or tomb, be it Sopor Aeternus, Skinny Puppy, Mayhem, or My Dying Bride......

Meshuggah and Nile are two of the few metal bands I'm still into.
I never cared for death metal, to be honest I always viewed it as a bit cheesy.
Doom metal I always liked, but when everyone started doing baritone, all the time, I got bored then, Ian Curtis had a terrible baritone compared to the majority of them, but he could convey emotion and passion through it, not to mention the lyrics.
Are opeth still considered Doom? I still love them, paradise lost (terrible live by the way) and my dying bride were my old loves.
Fuck, I don't even care about genres, I'm probably mixing things up, I like what I like, let the record store worry about what section to put them in.

I saw Nile live last year, along with Obscura(technical melodic death metal, not really my cup of tea), and Tryptikon(new doom metal band of Celtic Frost legend Tom Warrior, who were amazing!)
When it got to Nile, I would've praised them as an excellent technical act if it were not for one glaring error: The triggered drum set!!! AAAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!!!!
What would've been one of the best death metal live performances ever witnessed completely destroyed by those shitty typewriter-sounding drums!!!
Nile were pretty solidly into the late 90s school of brutal/technical death metal bands using triggered drums, but I still thought the element of keyboards and evil guitar tune made up for that....... not live.

I'm kinda the same way about the old school death metal, the stuff from the 80's and early 90's dominates for sure.


I tried to get into Nile, but I just couldn't bring myself to listen to them and not be "what am I listening to?" at least when it comes to the lyrics. I guess I'm mostly into the core groups that help boot the genre off, and not the main bands in the genre.



I always sorta lumped Napalm Death(whom of which I do like) into the Death Metal genre although it may be better to say they're a death metal influenced form of hardcore punk in a way.

I have a fair amount of technical death metal, bought and listened to initially with great enthusiasm, but after a while I tire of it and it finds its way to the bottom of my cd storage, until one day I finally figured out why:

Technical death metal, like old school death metal, really doesn't make a powerful EMOTIONAL connection with me. Admirable musicianship, tight playing, often sophisticated concepts, BUT....the appeal to my imagination is limited, and the unrelieved 'brootality' eventually becomes a little boring. Very little emotional range or melodic variation, just an unmodulated aural assault.

Contrast this with the emotional and imaginative richness and variety of doom and black metal, and even the better power metal bands like 'Blind Guardian' [probably the best of that school].

Note: one progressive death metal band that doesn't get nearly the attention it deserves is 'Between the Buried and Me'--worth checking out.

I think for those exact reasons is why i far prefer the old school of death metal over most garbage that came out after 1995. Even so, I generally preferred the European style of old school death metal over the American style, due to the Europeans often using loads of dark, minor chord melodies and their music mostly being influenced by doom metal, 80s black metal, and classical chord structures, whereas the Americans mostly focused on groove and percussiveness, with roots more in hardcore punk and thrash metal.
European bands like Bolt Thrower, Dismember, old Cemetary, early Therion, early Entombed, earliest Amorphis, Demilich, Demigod, Asphyx, Grave, old Tiamat, and the list goes on.
These bands used a lot of the same dark atmospheric elements as a lot of gothic music.

American bands, however, well...... there were definitely exceptions, such as the mysticism of Morbid Angel, or the darkness of Incantation, or doom influence of Autopsy.
However, I think Cannibal Corpse was your typical "American death metal" band full of mindless lyrics, chugging riffs, and blastbeats that just went nowhere, along with the ultra-cheese image those who hate death metal use as a reference to make fun of the genre.

It may sound inconsistent with what I just said about death metal, but I still love good Thrash, and listen to it a LOT. Slayer [above all!], Testament, Overkill, Voivod and Steele's old band Carnivore to name just a few, are in regular rotation on my CD player and ipod. I even like Pantera's best stuff, strangely enough! [though they may well have the WORST, most annoying fans], and though I'm well aware that Thrash has a fairly limited range, that small part of the musical spectrum it occupies it absolutely DOMINATES.

Thrash usually tended to be my metal of choice, myself. I'm usually the one who places Testament in Anthrax's spot of the big four, though. I never could get into the guys as hard as I tried and always loved Testament.


Death metal sort of grew out of thrash, which is probably why I like it, but once again, only the early stuff, same with thrash.

I just went to a kickass thrash metal event this monday with Riverge, Rosenfeld, and United, three classic Japanese thrash bands from back in the day.
Japan had an underground "visual thrash" movement in the 80s where the bands dressed like X-Japan, but sounded like Venom or Sodom. Much like the Brazilian scene, some of these bands wore nazi uniforms and swastikas for shock value alone.
Aion's first album is a classic if you can find it, as is Rosenfeld's sole album!!

I tend to be a German thrash fan myself, as the "big 3" can kick the "big 4's" ass any day of the week!!!