Best Death Metal Bands!!!
 

O.K., this thread is kinda self explanatory. Yes, it is a thread where people can fight over if this genre or this one is better than metal. but in the end, metal always comes out victorious, like it has since Black Sabbath's "Black Sabbath." these are some of my favorites

Amon Amarth
Cannibal Corpse
Behemoth
Nile
Slayer
Tyr
Dying Fetus
Napalm Death
Death
Athiest
Exodus
Metallica (Pre-Black Album)
Megadeth
Kreator
Children of Bodom
this list goes on...

Well, Xiphos, I like your handle -- or should I get cute and say your hilt? It's, uh, Classical.

I'm wayyy too old for deathmetal now, though. I had a few early metal albums -- two from Black Sabbath -- and I think metal suits adolescent emotional makeup, but the charm of it begins to fade in one's twenties, and it's about wholly gone by thirty, as one's emotional development moves away from it. Have some other favorite genres to take its place when that begins to happen -- Wagner in symphonic music, or Mahler, or the Russian Romantics -- Mussorgskiy, Tchaikovsky, Rimskii-Korsakov, Rachmaninov like that. Likewise The 1812 Overture. Classical symphony music in that vein tends to be stuff that's accessible to metal fans.

One's taste in music becomes less simplistic than metal usually is as one's years increase. You end up thinking, "Big-ass thumping rhythm, yeah, check; been there." You find yourself looking for more subtlety -- something less like grain alcohol and more like wine, or brandy when you're feeling ferocious.

The music I've committed to doing with my life, and if you ask me, trying to make music is the thing that really gets you understanding it, is that of the Highland bagpipe. I enjoy music in the key of Celt and can happily sing drunken Irish war-songs and comic songs all night, but there is something in the craggy, rocky, Celtic music of the Scots that calls to my soul. So I practice my pipes from time to time.

hmm. death metal v. bagpipes.

tough choice there.

@xiphos: Do you ever watch Metalocalypse? That's Gene Hoglan on the drums.

well....it's not death metal, but I like ted leo and the pharmacists. My favorite is "Bomb. Repeat. Bomb." it's so right for our times.

Hmmm...I wouldn't call some of those bands "death metal" per se. I don't know if any metal bands I like are actually death metal...maybe Dimmu Borgir?

UG, are you stating that there is no possibility that any sophistication or mature musical interest can exist in any form of the "metal" genre?

Metal is, in my mind, the logical extension of classical music, in that it moved away from the "big-ass thumping rhythm" of other popular styles, and back to a more clinical European interpretation of the beat. And there's more to it than blazing 16ths or 32nd note double-bass runs. The envelope of broken, displaced rhythms, metric modulations, and intricate time-signatures is constantly being pushed, at breakneck speed. When you state "...less simplistic than metal usually is..." I strongly feel that you don't really know where metal has gone in the last 40 years.

I bought a Megadeth album a few years ago (and yes, this along with Slayer etc. are influential to, but not actually "death" metal) because Vinnie Colaiuta played drums on it. If you "...find yourself looking for more subtlety..." look no further. This guy played with everybody from Zappa to Steely Dan to Quincy Jones, Herbie Hancock, even Barbra Streisand. To hear his smoothly polyrhythmic constructions, applied to obstensibly aggressive metal patterns, it makes your head spin with the subtlety involved. Playing metal doesn't mean abandoning all but primal instincts, by far.

That being said, listen to whatever floats your boat. I'm right there at the Celtic fairs digging on that stuff to, but I don't close my mind to other forms of expression. And, regarding expression, the other thing about metal is that it isn't ashamed to call attention to the dark side of things, rather than sweeping it under the rug. The anger in the "metal" expression is often a righteous anger, often a political commentary, and rarely just a juvenile urge to make loud, meaningless noises. There are emotions to express besides sweet, pretty ones, and I don't think it's healthy to bottle them up. Metal is a release valve for the psyche.

Not that I'm a metal-head either. I may listen to Max Roach one minute and Slayer the next. I play country, I play "praise and worship" or whatever else anybody wants to do. Music is music, I don't discriminate. It all expresses something valid, to somebody.

I listen to metal but tend to stick away from grindcore like Cannibal Corpse. Some of my favorites...

Opeth
Between The Buried and Me
Meshuggah
Gojira
Atheist
Mastadon
etc

And Brianna, how could you even think that Ted Leo and the Pharmacists aren't death metal. Scariest two shows I've ever been too. But damn, I'll have to go with Me and Mia.

:) don't you love that?

Norwegian Black Metal.

Thrash/Speed Metal.

Ya, i screwed up there lol. Anyways, but to Urbane Guerrilla, I am only 17. But I am starting to REALLY enjoy Viking folk metal, like Tyr.

I've listened to a lot of "metal"over the years but can't get into the vocals.there are loads of great bands out there that have very talented musicians in them then the growly or screaming vocals start and it just turns me right off.

Generating and sustaining the Death Growl take a lot of effort.



[notice]I'm not trying to change your mind, I'm just trying to inform.[/notice]

bebop, you have to open up your ears more, be more openminded and accept the lyrics.