The Magazine

8 chapters

Death Metal History

Torn out of thrash with the melodies cut away and the tempo left running, death metal was laid on the slab within six years and opened by six scenes into six different musics. 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 M...

By Rafael Quintero · latest chapter Feb 7, 2026

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

2 chapters

Doom Metal History

Doom, sludge and stoner went down the way everything goes into a tar pit, each layer sinking onto the last, starting from a single day in a London studio in 1969. From Black Sabbath and the eighties faithful through Cathedral, death doom, sludge, stoner, funeral doom and drone to the records of the 2020s, nothing that...

By Ilse Brandt · latest chapter Dec 28, 2025

1. The Slowest Music in Metal: Doom, Sludge and Stoner, from Black Sabbath to Now
2. Death Doom: Peaceville, Winter and the Slowest Extremity

3 chapters

Thrash History

In the years the Ruhr's pits and steelworks were closing, three German bands took Venom and Motorhead instead of Diamond Head and made records nobody could afford to fix. What came out was rawer than the Bay Area, and it is what death metal and black metal were built on.

By Declan Rourke · latest chapter Dec 14, 2025

1. Teutonic Thrash: Kreator, Sodom, Destruction and the Ruhr (1983–1990)
2. Brazil, Canada and the Rest of the World (1984–1991)
3. The Fall and the Revival (1991–Now)

2 chapters

Black History

Venom printed the words on a sleeve in 1982 and the music that deserved them arrived nine years later in another country. Between those two dates sit six bands in five countries who never sounded like each other, and the genre was assembled afterwards out of what they left behind.

By Eirik Solvang · latest chapter Nov 1, 2025

1. The First Wave: Venom, Bathory, Hellhammer and the Word Itself (1981-1987)
2. Norway: Helvete, the Inner Circle and the Second Wave (1991-1994)