Some people love it, some people hate it... But hey, death metal is basically Darker and Edgier thrash metal. IT HAS TO HAVE AWESOME TUNES.
- Decapitated's "A Poem About an Old Prison Man". They turned a poem by Charles Manson into death metal perfection.
- Organic Hallucinosis is a must-listen for any metal fan. Hell, the whole band's disography counts.
- Winds of Creation proved that the band had chops even in their teens, and quickly gained the band plenty of well-deserved attention and acclaim. Their cover of Slayer which arguably manages to outdo the original for sheer manic intensity is a high point, but Human's Dust
is one of the best songs they've ever written. Dat solo. - Not death metal at all, but the instrumental Silence is a Tear Jerker of a tribute to Vitek. And it is gorgeous.
- Everything Between the Buried and Me have done since Alaska.
- "Roboturner" deserves its own page, from the First Note Nightmare to the final bass Fade Out.
- The Parallax II: Future Sequence is 72 minutes of insane, inhuman, physically impossible awesome, but "Astral Body", "Lay Your Gosts to Rest" and "Telos" are all just chillingly amazing.
- "Obfuscation". The music never lets up for all of the nearly 10 minutes that encompasses this song, with two brilliant guitar solos.
- Cannibal Corpse's entire Gore Obsessed album is pure awesome death metal.
- They seem to strike gold every 10 years, as Tomb of the Mutilated, Gore Obsessed, and Torture (1992, 2002, and 2012, respectively) have some of their best songs.
- "From Skin To Liquid" and the instrumental version of "Frantic Disembowelment".
- A Skeletal Domain has been hailed since their best since Gallery of Suicide, and rightfully so! The album has a spookier, darker tone to it than usual, which sounds really rad.
- You just can't complete this page without mentioning Atheist at least once. All of their songs are downright epic in some way or another, but that's to be expected from the most respected Technical Death Metal band of all time. Of all time!
- Origin:
- The entire Antithesis album, specifically the title track. Begins with the quote "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds," and proceeds to kick your ass with a nine and a half minute technical death metal masterpiece.
- Entity is even better, as it has all the compositional strengths of Antithesis with a whole lot more variation and a production that not only fixes the main problem with Antithesis (overly muddy production), but manages to have some actual breathing room as opposed to your typical obnoxiously brickwalled Suecof/Otero/Rutan/Morabito shitfest.
- The entire Antithesis album, specifically the title track
- Cynic:
- Their debut album, Focus, is pure genius, especially the ending instrumental section of the last song, "How Could I".
- Traced in Air has its fair share of awesome moments as well. Case in point: the soaring "A MIIIIIIIIILLION DOOOOOOOOOVES" chorus on "Integral Birth".
- "King of Those Who Know" is easily one of the best songs in their discography, especially the ending.
- Fleshgod Apocalypse, high speed Symphonic Technical Death Metal.
- Mexican band The Chasm have a lot of winners in their discography. Here's a spellbinding eleven-minute instrumental from 2009's Farseeing the Paranormal Abysm.
- Timeghoul has to be heard to be believed. There is nothing else that sounds even remotely like this band. Start with Boiling in the Hourglass and go from there.
- Demilich are legendary in the metal underground for a reason. Large numbers of bands have tried to emulate this group. All of them have failed. Here's a link to their stuff on YouTube, or you can just download their stuff from their site. If you're in need of a specific song recommendation, "(Within) the Chamber of Whispering Eyes" (which is sometimes labelled as "The Putrefying Road in the Nineteenth Extremity") is probably their "catchiest" song.
- Czech act Lykathea Aflame have only released one album (the follow-up has been in Development Hell for at least ten years), but it's a doozy. A few choice cuts: On the Way Home, Sadness and Strength, and A Step Closer. They're unusual among death metal acts for using mostly major keys and featuring no guitar solos, but their material is still incredibly heavy, technical, and progressive. See also Appalling Spawn, to which Lykathea Aflame is a successor; unfortunately, Lykathea's amazing drummer Tomáลก Corn was not in Appalling Spawn.
- Literally every song by Behemoth ever (pioneer of Blackened Death Metal). However, "Chant for Ezkaton 2000" deserves a mention, specially the live version that is considerably downtuned WAY below the studio version. The studio version is awesome on its own, but when played live and downtuned, the catchy riff sounds absolutely beautiful.
- Six Feet Under may be a polarizing band, but just try to deny the awesomeness of their albums Undead and Unborn. There's a reason even some of their haters like them both. Meanwhile, Haunted and Warpath prove you don't need to be technical to make a good death metal album.
- Anything and everything by Obituary, one of the pioneers of the entire genre. Just a few examples:
- The riff in "By the Light" will not leave your head, but it's so simple and awesome that you won't want it to.
- The instrumental "Redneck Stomp" has become a death metal Cult Classic for a reason.
- Slowly We Rot and Cause of Death are both classic albums all the way through.
- The band Bloodbath was formed for one reason and one reason only: to pay homage to classic Swedish death metal. How could you go wrong with a supergroup featuring (or had featured) members from Opeth, Katatonia, Edge of Sanity, Hypocrisy, and Paradise Lost? It is glorious.
- Death are regarded as the genre's founding fathers for good reason, and their last four albums - Human, Individual Thought Patterns, Symbolic, and The Sound of Perseverance - are justifiably regarded as the point where technical and progressive death metal got their starts. With these albums, Schuldiner and company set a standard that very few bands since have matched. Have a listen to "Flesh and the Power It Holds" and "Voice of the Soul" from The Sound of Perseverance, or "Perennial Quest" from Symbolic. Their earlier albums were the ones that started the transition from thrash metal to full on death metal, and they still hold up well into the 21st century. See "Pull the Plug", "Leprosy", and "Left to Die" from Leprosy, along with "Zombie Ritual", and "Denial of Life" from their debut, Scream Bloody Gore.
- Dismember needs a mention here, their entire Like an Ever Flowing Stream album could easily qualify, so let's start with Override of the Overture.
- Electrocution was a short-lived Italian Death/Thrash nobody group that came and dropped Inside the Unreal and called it a career, at least until they reformed after the Internet gave them a new fanbase. With songs like Premature Burial, it's hard not to see why.
- If you know your Death Metal, you probably know Incantation. If you don't, they play Death Metal in its most dark, cavernous and downright evil form. Check out, just to name some examples, Golgotha, The Ibex Moon, and Shadows of the Ancient Empire.
- Macabre are one of the pioneering bands of both Death Metal and Grindcore, having been formed in 1984, so they deserve some mention here. With a discography dedicated to the crimes of Real Life Serial Killers, their output is not only rather heavy, but they also add a touch of whimsy here and there. Check out Ed Gein, Vampire of Düsseldorf, or for some Dark Comedy, their own twist on the Ooompa Loompas' theme.
- Classic Swedish band At the Gates has their iconic album Slaughter of the Soul. It's hard hitting yet melodic with one of the most glorious guitar tones in Melodic Death Metal (created with a boss HM-2 and Metal Zone through a valve amp). Here's the title track.
- The Black Dahlia Murder takes the formula set up by At The Gates and cranks it up to the point that they manage to channel melody AND brutality within one awesome, razor-sharp package. "What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse", Goat of Departure, and "I Will Return" are but a few of the awesome songs they have made over their career.
- There are some kickass underground death metal bands that are definitely worth checking out.
- Beheaded's album Perpetual Mockery is absolutely incredible from start to finish. One of the standout songs from the album, "Void of Empathy", just happens to be one of the most beautiful death metal songs ever made.
- Assimilation. The Laws of Power has an amazing old school death metal sound. If you like OSDM, you might enjoy this album.
- Seance. Fornever Laid to Rest is an underrated classic.
- Beheaded's album Perpetual Mockery
- Frozen Soul are like a modern day Chris Barnes era Cannibal Corpse, as if Bolt Thrower had incorporated slam riffs into their music. They have that nasty, wretched death metal sound from the 90s that makes the music so fucking good! Glacial Domination is a banger from start to finish, and with production and some tracks with additional vocals/guitar from Matt Heafy of Trivium and Capharnaum fame, you really can't go wrong.
- Gruesome is the PERFECT tribute to 80s death metal. They actually do sound like the music Music/Death would make if Chuck Schuldiner was still alive. Savage Land is the essential OSDM tribute album.
Inside crystal mountain
Evil takes its form
Inside crystal mountain
Commandments are reborn
