Death Metal

Thrash with the melodies cut out and the tempo left running. A Bay Area teenager put the words on a demo tape in 1984, Scott Burns wired the sound into a Tampa studio, and within six years those two words covered everything from Chuck Schuldiner's arpeggios to a Stockholm guitar pedal turned all the way up.

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444Articles
8History chapters
107Guides & essentials
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The History

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8 Chapters Chuck Schuldiner singing with Death on stage
Genre Histories

Death Metal: The Complete History, the Bands and the Albums

Death metal started as thrash metal with the melodies cut out and the tempo left running, and within six years the same word covered six different musics. This is the whole story, from a demo tape that named the genre by accident in 1984 to an album of the year in 2024: the break from thrash, Florida and Morrisound, th...

By Rafael Quintero · 8 chapters · latest February 2026
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Chapters

  1. 01 Death Metal: The Complete History, the Bands and the Albums
  2. 02 Origins: Possessed, Death and the Break From Thrash (1983-1987)
  3. 03 Florida: Tampa, Morrisound and the Boom (1987-1993)
  4. 04 Sweden: Stockholm, Gothenburg and Two Different Sounds
  5. 05 New York, Brutality and the Rise of Slam
  6. 06 Britain, the Netherlands, Poland and the Rest of the World
  7. 07 The Nineties: The Peak, the Slump and What Survived
  8. 08 The Revival: Old School, Caverns and the Modern Underground

Death Metal News

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Guides & Essentials

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Slayer on stage Explainers

Why Is It Called Black Metal?

One item in a list of five, thrown out in an interview by an irritated twenty three year old and printed on a sleeve. Where the words come from, the ten years when t...

Label Histories The Death Metal Labels That Built the Genre Essential Albums Death Metal Albums in Chronological Order Essential Albums Swedish Melodic Death Metal Bands

Bands

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