The Rise of Death Metal

Chuck Schuldiner’s now legendary band, Death lent the name to a genre which inspired a generation, and a few more or guttural vocals, slamming double bass and hard core guitar riffs.

Schuldiner started off with Death in 1983 and was the path breaking hero of a new genre for 15 years before his death in 1999. During this course of time, Schuldiner’s band Death, Morbid Angel and a few more bands from the same genre paved the way for bands like Slayer and Possessed to get on stage and rip their acts.

The land mark albums in the genre in its nascent stage were Scream Bloody Gore, released by Death in 1987 and Morbid Angel’s Altar of Madness in 1989, with most people considering Death’s album as the template for future death metal.

Since it’s inception by Death and the likes, the genre has spawned a lot of sub genres. The scene has become split up, and there are a lot of schools of death or black metal these days. The U.S. has seen the rise of grind core and rap core, where as the European scene has evolved in to a more symphonic sound owing to the influences of the Scandinavian bands.

The first labels to sing death metal bands on a large scale were Roadrunner Records and Earache Records, and since then, almost all record labels have rushed to sign any and every death or black or symphonic metal band that shows any promise. The Wacken Festival in Germany sees a lot of these bands perform exclusively for death metal heads every year.