Ten records made this music and everything since is commentary. That is an awkward thing to put at the top of a list holding twenty two of them, so here is the rule the list obeys: an album is here for what it made possible, not for how much anybody enjoys it. Enjoyment is not a small thing. It is simply not the test.
Every entry below did something first, or did one thing so completely that nobody could do it that way again without being accused of copying. Each comes with the label, the year, the room it was cut in and the specific thing it changed, because a canon without those four is just a set of opinions in a nice order. Where the received canon is wrong, there is a section for that too, with reasons attached. If you would rather have the wider story than the shortlist, the whole history of the genre runs through it chapter by chapter.
Two warnings. Records with enormous reputations are missing, because a reputation measures what an album did to its audience rather than what it did to the music. And two albums that everybody names as their band's peak get argued down here, which is the point of writing this rather than reprinting somebody else's list.
The three that wrote the alphabet
Possessed got there first and got the least out of it. Seven Churches was cut at Prairie Sun Studios in Cotati in the first week of April 1985, Randy Burns producing, two of the four musicians sixteen years old, and Combat released it on 4 November that year. What it did first is plain: it is the record that separated the voice from the words. Jeff Becerra was not shouting, he was sounding, and no thrash singer had committed to that for a whole album. The rest of it is still thrash and the band knew it. Even so, everything in this article is standing on it.
Nineteen months later, Death finished the job in a Los Angeles studio with two people in it. Scream Bloody Gore was recorded at Music Grinder in November 1986 with Chris Reifert on drums and Chuck Schuldiner playing guitars and bass and singing, and Combat put it out on 25 May 1987 after rejecting an earlier Florida session outright. What it did first is a subtraction rather than an addition: no thrash chorus, no clean opening, no half-speed section written to give the listener a rest. Thirty-nine minutes of one thing. Every death metal album ever made is a variation on the decision taken here to remove the escape routes.
Altars of Madness then turned a style into a working system. The four from Tampa recorded it at Morrisound in December 1988 with Tom Morris engineering, Earache released it on 12 May 1989, and Pete Sandoval held a blast beat across an entire album for the first time in the genre's short life while Trey Azagthoth wrote lead lines that resolve nowhere the ear expects. Decibel inducted it in 2006. Its real achievement is that after 1989 nobody could write slowly and claim it was a stylistic decision; the ceiling had been set and everyone had to answer to it.
Tampa turns it into a commodity
Between 1989 and 1994 one building in Tampa produced the sound that the entire world copied, and the four albums in this section are the reason. Morrisound Recording with Scott Burns at the desk did not invent anything. It standardised, and standardisation is what turns a scene into a genre. There is a cost in that and you can hear it: a great many records from those years are indistinguishable from one another below the vocal.
Obituary made the case for weight over speed. Cause of Death was cut at Morrisound with Burns and released by Roadrunner on 19 September 1990, with James Murphy playing lead guitar on his only record with the band and John Tardy delivering a vocal that contains no decipherable words at all. What it did first was prove the genre did not need velocity. Take the tempo out and the music got heavier, not lighter, and half of what came afterwards is an argument with that discovery.
Deicide's debut is here for a different reason. Recorded at Morrisound in March 1990 and released by R/C on 26 June, four men and thirty-three minutes, it is the first record in this music to behave like a commercial proposition without softening a single bar to do it: Glen Benton's stacked high and low vocals, Steve Asheim's double kick, Eric and Brian Hoffman trading solos. By Nielsen SoundScan's count it is the second best selling death metal album ever made in the United States, behind Morbid Angel's Covenant.
Suffocation came down from Long Island and left the genre a new device. Effigy of the Forgotten was recorded at Morrisound with Burns and released by Roadrunner on 22 October 1991, and the breakdown in "Liege of Inveracity" is taken as the first slam riff put on a record: full speed for ninety seconds, then half time, then a weight on the chest that nobody had thought to apply. Brutal death metal begins there. So does a great deal that would rather not admit the parentage.
Europe answered in the same window and did not go to Tampa to do it. Pestilence recorded Consuming Impulse at Music Lab in Berlin with Harris Johns producing and Martin van Drunen singing on it for the last time, and Roadrunner released it at the end of 1989: a colder, drier, more paranoid record than anything Florida was making, and the proof that the Morrisound template was a choice rather than a requirement.
Stockholm, and the loudest guitar in Europe
Entombed did the one thing nobody else in this article managed, which is to make the tone itself the identity of the band. Left Hand Path was recorded at Sunlight Studio in December 1989 with Tomas Skogsberg and released by Earache on 4 June 1990: guitars tuned to B through a Boss HM-2 pedal with every control turned to maximum, Nicke Andersson playing drums out of hardcore rather than out of thrash, Lars-Göran Petrov never once raising his voice above the level he starts at. What it did first is now so ordinary that it takes an effort to hear it as an invention. Before this album, a guitar sound was something you got. After it, a guitar sound was something you chose, and the choice told everyone which side of the map you were on.
Before this album a guitar sound was something you got. After it, a guitar sound was something you chose.
Dismember then wrote better songs with the same equipment. Like an Ever Flowing Stream came out of Sunlight with Skogsberg and Fred Estby and Nuclear Blast released it on 28 May 1991, and where Entombed built an atmosphere Dismember built choruses you can hum, which is a harder trick in this music than it sounds. The album also got the band charged with obscenity in Britain over a track called "Skin Her Alive". They defended themselves and won, and the case is one of the few times the state was forced to say out loud what it thought this music was.
Downward instead of forward
While Florida was getting faster, two bands went the other way and took a whole wing of the genre with them. Autopsy recorded Mental Funeral at Different Fur Studios in San Francisco between 20 and 26 November 1990, Peaceville released it on 22 April 1991, and Chris Reifert, who had drummed on Scream Bloody Gore at nineteen, sang and played drums on a record that was hardly mixed at all. What it did first was refuse the professional finish. The songs stop and restart, the tempos collapse mid-phrase, and the whole charnel thing sounds as though it were assembled in the dark. Death doom starts here and so does most of what people now call cavernous.
Incantation pushed the same idea into the ground. Onward to Golgotha was tracked at Trax East in South River across the autumn of 1991 with Steve Evetts engineering and Relapse released it on 5 May 1992: Craig Pillard singing from somewhere beneath the drums, the tempo dropping into a crawl and back without warning, the guitars deliberately smeared. It is the most sepulchral record in this article and it is also the most influential one of the last fifteen years, because every new band with a blurred logo and a doom section has taken its instructions from here rather than from Tampa. It never makes the published lists. It should be near the top of them.
A canon is not a list of the best records. It is a list of the records that made the next ones possible.
Andrzej Sawicki, KaosMetal
The records that made it difficult
Death changed direction in 1991 and dragged the genre with it. Human was recorded at Morrisound in May 1991 with Scott Burns and released by Relativity on 22 October: Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert of Cynic on guitar and drums, Steve Di Giorgio on fretless bass, and Schuldiner writing arrangements that no longer repeat when you expect them to. What it did first was make technique the subject. After Human a death metal band could be judged on composition, and thousands of them have been failing that test happily ever since.
Atheist got there in parallel and with worse luck. Unquestionable Presence came out in 1991 with Tony Choy playing the bass parts written by Roger Patterson, who had died in a road crash in rural Louisiana on 12 February that year, at 22. It is the first record to put an actual jazz rhythm section inside death metal rather than a quotation of one, and thirty-five years later almost nobody has matched what it does with a time signature.
Cynic then went so far out that the audience took fifteen years to arrive. Focus was cut at Morrisound with Scott Burns, of all people, and Roadrunner released it on 13 September 1993: Sean Malone on fretless bass and Chapman Stick, Sean Reinert playing drums that nobody in the genre could follow, Jason Gobel and Masvidal on guitar synthesiser, and a vocoder on the clean vocals. The death metal press of 1993 was not kind. Decibel put it in its Hall of Fame in 2009, and every progressive extreme metal band working today is downstream of it.
Two more records belong in this section and neither is American. Demilich made one album, Nespithe, recorded in Savonlinna in the last week of December 1992 and released by Necropolis in February 1993, with Antti Boman singing in a register so low and so strange that thirty-three years of imitators have all been immediately identifiable as imitators. Cryptopsy made None So Vile at Studio Victor in Montreal with Pierre Rémillard and put it out on 3 July 1996: thirty-two minutes, and Flo Mounier's drumming on it moved the floor under every drummer in the genre. Before that record technical brutality was an ambition. After it, it was a job description.
And then there is the strangest release in this article. Gorguts wrote Obscura between April and December 1993, then spent four years rehearsing the same songs and writing nothing else because no label would take it, until Olympic finally released it on 23 June 1998 out of the same Montreal room with the same producer. It is not written so much as opened on a table with the ribs held apart, every joint left visible and no chorus anywhere to cover the work. What it did first was treat dissonance as a structural material rather than an effect, and the entire modern dissonant wing, Ulcerate included, comes out of it.
| Album | Year | Label | Cut at | What it did first |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Possessed, Seven Churches | 1985 | Combat | Prairie Sun, Cotati | Separated the voice from the words |
| Death, Scream Bloody Gore | 1987 | Combat | Music Grinder, Los Angeles | Removed every escape route |
| Morbid Angel, Altars of Madness | 1989 | Earache | Morrisound, Tampa | Held a blast across a whole album |
| Pestilence, Consuming Impulse | 1989 | Roadrunner | Music Lab, Berlin | Proved the Florida sound was optional |
| Obituary, Cause of Death | 1990 | Roadrunner | Morrisound, Tampa | Heaviness without speed |
| Deicide, Deicide | 1990 | R/C | Morrisound, Tampa | Sold without softening a bar |
| Entombed, Left Hand Path | 1990 | Earache | Sunlight, Stockholm | Made the tone the identity |
| Autopsy, Mental Funeral | 1991 | Peaceville | Different Fur, San Francisco | Refused the professional finish |
| Dismember, Like an Ever Flowing Stream | 1991 | Nuclear Blast | Sunlight, Stockholm | Put choruses in the buzzsaw |
| Death, Human | 1991 | Relativity | Morrisound, Tampa | Made technique the subject |
| Atheist, Unquestionable Presence | 1991 | Active Records | Morrisound, Tampa | A real jazz rhythm section inside it |
| Suffocation, Effigy of the Forgotten | 1991 | Roadrunner | Morrisound, Tampa | The slam riff |
| Carcass, Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious | 1991 | Earache | Amazon, Simonswood | Twin leads inside the filth |
| Incantation, Onward to Golgotha | 1992 | Relapse | Trax East, South River | Put the whole genre underground |
| Demilich, Nespithe | 1993 | Necropolis | Savonlinna | A voice nobody has copied convincingly |
| Cynic, Focus | 1993 | Roadrunner | Morrisound, Tampa | Fusion, without asking permission |
| Cryptopsy, None So Vile | 1996 | Wrong Again | Studio Victor, Montreal | Reset what a drummer must do |
| Gorguts, Obscura | 1998 | Olympic | Studio Victor, Montreal | Dissonance as structure |
| Nile, Black Seeds of Vengeance | 2000 | Relapse | The Sound Lab, Lexington | Found a new source of material |
| Blood Incantation, Hidden History of the Human Race | 2019 | Dark Descent | World Famous, Denver | Proved the form still expands |
Where the canon is wrong
Start with Carcass, because this is the clearest case. Every published list puts Heartwork in the canon, and Heartwork is a fine record: recorded at Parr Street Studios in Liverpool between 18 May and 21 June 1993 with Colin Richardson, released by Earache on 18 October, licensed to Columbia in America the following January, an H. R. Giger sculpture on the sleeve, at least 81,000 copies sold. The trouble is that everything it is praised for was already finished two years earlier. Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious was cut at Amazon Studios with the same producer and released on 30 October 1991, and it is the album on which Michael Amott arrives, the twin leads are worked out and the melodic writing is set inside music that has not been tidied. Heartwork is the cleaner statement and the one that got a video. Cleaner is not the same as first.
Heartwork is the better known record. Necroticism is the one that did the inventing.
Then At the Gates. Slaughter of the Soul, recorded at Studio Fredman in the summer of 1995 with Fredrik Nordström and released by Earache on 14 November, sits in every canon in print, and it is the least interesting album the band made. Its position is earned by consequence rather than by content: it is the record American metalcore learned from, and twenty-five years of that has been read backwards into the album until people cannot hear it any more. Go to With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness (Peaceville, 1993) and Terminal Spirit Disease (Peaceville, 1994) instead, which are stranger, less resolved and much closer to what this band was actually for. Keep Slaughter of the Soul on the shelf. Stop calling it the peak.
And one omission that is always defended and should not be. Cannibal Corpse have outsold everybody in this article and belong in a chapter about the business rather than in this one, because what they changed was the size of the audience and not the music. Tomb of the Mutilated (Metal Blade, 1992) is a good record. Name one thing on it that had not already been done by somebody in this list, and the answer will be about volume of sales, cover art or a court case, none of which is a musical invention. Selling is a real achievement. It is a different achievement.
After the century turned
The genre spent the late 1990s being told it was finished, and then produced four records that settled the argument. Nile released Black Seeds of Vengeance through Relapse on 5 September 2000, cut at The Sound Lab in Lexington with Bob Moore, and did the rarest thing available to a band this deep into a form: they found new material to write about and new instruments to write it with, and Karl Sanders built whole sections out of modes and low percussion that no death metal band had touched, with Derek Roddy sitting in on drums. Necrophagist followed with Epitaph (Relapse, 3 August 2004), recorded across three German rooms with Muhammed Suiçmez writing in notation software, and the guitar arms race it started is still running. Whether that was good for the music is genuinely arguable, and it is in this article because the argument exists.
Blood Incantation ended the idea that this music could only look backwards. Hidden History of the Human Race was recorded at World Famous Studios in Denver in June 2019 and Dark Descent released it on 22 November: four tracks, the last of them eighteen minutes long, built out of the marrow of the 1990s underground and arranged like something nobody in the 1990s would have attempted. It took a Metacritic average of 91, topped Decibel's list for the year and went to number one on the Billboard Heatseekers chart, which for a record on an independent label playing this music is close to absurd.
Ulcerate are the last entry and the hardest. Three musicians from Auckland took what Obscura did to the guitar and built a whole body of work on it, and Stare Into Death and Be Still (Debemur Morti, 2020) is the one that finally balances the dissonance against something a listener can hold on to. If you want to know whether death metal is still being invented rather than maintained, that album is the answer, and so is the fact that it took twenty years of records to get there.
Twenty two records, thirty five years, eight countries and one stubborn refusal to become respectable. I own all of them on more than one format, which tells you something about me and nothing about the list. Work through them in the order they were made and you will hear the genre solving the same problem twenty different ways. Then go and see what the sleeves, the tape covers and the artwork were doing while all this was going on, because the culture around the music was never separate from it.
