Listening to Classic Metal Albums for the First Time, Pt. 1

ME(T)A(L) CULPA
(This section isn’t too important— just a whole lot of belly-aching and throat-clearing and self-indulgence— so feel free to skip ahead to the record reviews if you don’t feel like reading through this gunk!)

I have a very long history with emo/hardcore/adjacent music— I know many of the subgenres and histories inside and out, and I can delineate between the tiniest sonic variations within regional interpretations of each form. All of these are things that I never really took the time to do with metal. In fact, I’ve been kind of condescending towards metal for a long time, only investigating what I felt like I needed familiarity with in order to understand its impact on punk and hardcore. Part of this has to do with the vague, longstanding “rivalry” between punk and metal on, I guess, ideological grounds that I apparently took a little too seriously when I was a kid. But to tell you the truth, I think I was just being a dick because metal wasn’t “cool” in the same way as punk/hardcore/emo/etc. And whatever metal I did like, I tried to handwave it away as being due to its inherent influence from hardcore or whatever rather than appreciating it on its own merits.

That’s a really shitty and arrogant point of view to take, as it turns out! In my Underoath retrospective from way back when, I even remember saying “hardcore is fundamentally a less limited/restricting genre than metal” or something like that, which is patently false. I tried to tell myself that I preferred hardcore because it was more authentic and the shorter songs were more conducive to my short attention span, but the truth is hardcore is full of its own type of performative bullshit, it just reads as more “authentic” due to its aesthetic— there’s nothing about that is really inherently more passionate, artful, or “real” than metal, just like how a song’s length doesn’t actually matter as long as it’s fuckin’ interesting.

When I had my big semi-nervous-breakdown last month, it opened me up a lot to seeing things from perspectives that I didn’t really ever think to entertain before. At the same time, I’ve also just felt so trapped and boxed-in by what I’m “allowed” to discuss musically (which, of course, is self-imposed) that listening to music wasn’t giving me any joy and I didn’t ever feel like doing it. In the past, the best way to combat that sort of loss-of-interest-due-to-depression— and, to be honest, something that should be done regularly just to keep me sharp and sane— was to deep dive into a whole other genre, and metal seemed to be the way to go, not least because I had a lot to make up for with regards to my attitude towards it in the past, but also because it was so completely arbitrary for me to shut myself off from so much music I probably would have enjoyed out of a false sense of arrogance.

I think the big push for me came when I realized that there is no way that listening to metal could, in any way, be more embarrassing or less cool than any of those other genres. Is referring to yourself as “Quorthon” or “Abbath” any more embarrassing than the legions of fully-grown men who have elected to have bands and zines instead of last names? Are lyrics about dragons and horror movies any more cringeworthy than the 77th consecutive song about getting stabbed in the back (because your friend broke edge or held the hand of a girl you had a crush on or some bullshit)? Is there any logical argument you can make that saying you listen to “blackened death metal” is somehow even more painful than saying you listen to “twinkly emo” or “mathcore” or “hyperpop”?

Then came the final nail in the coffin— despite my perception of metal as being filled with thin-skinned pedantic dorks who have monstrous egos and poor reading comprehension skills, hardcore and punk and emo are all also filled with the exact same type of dipshit and everyone knows it (and I’m definitely including myself there). The stereotype of the neckbeard metal nerd is really only slightly less unfair than the stereotype of the meathead jock hardcore kid, or the manipulative sex pest emo dweeb, and so on and so forth. Hell, in metal, people might actually be less concerned with how you carry yourself or how traditionally cool you are. Plus, unlike in DIY emo, I’ve met very few metalheads who say “uwu,” which is a huge bonus.

Ultimately I would probably say that the moral of this story is that attaching any significant amount of your self-worth or personal values to something as silly as the genre of music you choose to listen to is really fucking stupid, and it’s kind of embarrassing that I’ve lived with the cognitive dissonance of knowing that and still falling into the trap anyway for so long.

Now, I am still a dysfunctional mess of a person who is always trying to be better than I was yesterday, so hardcore and emo will always be a huge part of my life, but I just felt like it was time to get the fuck over myself, and that getting out of my sonic comfort zone would shake me up and make me feel excited about listening to and writing about music again. So I called upon some friends of mine for suggestions, most particularly David Anthony, who contributed so many that he almost deserves cowriting credit for this piece, and decided to really dive into metal for the first time. Since I have so many blind spots in this genre, I also thought it would be a fun and potentially very funny idea to record my responses as I listened to albums that are generally accepted to be legendary or classic.

I tried to listen to at least some variety of subgenres, and will be covering the albums in each section in chronological order. In any case, I got lots of suggestions— so many that there’s definitely going to be a part 2 and potentially even a part 3 to this newsletter, if people don’t hate it. Who knows? I need you guys to tell me what you like. But also don’t, because it’s my newsletter and I’ll cover what I want.

I guess at the end of the day, what I’m trying to say is that after a lifetime of listening to hardcore and emo, I’ve gotten really cynical and jaded, to the point where it’s hard for me to unreservedly enjoy even the releases that I know are great. But with metal, so much of it is still so new to me that I can explore scenes and regional variations and microgenres, and discover shit that makes me feel like I’m experiencing something new, rather than having seen it all before. And with any luck, spending enough time in this world won’t just introduce something completely new to my sonic vocabulary, it’ll refresh my perspective and give me renewed insight into the music I already feel like I know inside and out. So with that said, let’s get into it.

EARLY METAL

Inarguably, this was the area of metal that everyone seemed to agree I did not need to spend a significant amount of time exploring. It makes sense, because a lot of metal of this era seems to bear little resemblance to most of what people who dig metal listen to today— and I’m not gonna lie, the prospect of listening to some of those high-pitched “yeahhhhhhhh” vocals was somewhat worrisome. But I still felt it was important to have a handle on the basics. I mean, obviously I already liked Judas Priest and Blue Öyster Cult and Motörhead because what self-respecting fan of music does not enjoy “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper,” “Godzilla,” “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming,” “Ace of Spades,” “Overkill,” or best of all the title track off Judas Priest’s Painkiller (a stunningly heavy, inspired, and fantastic album from a band nearly 20 years into their career at that point)? But I still had two pretty big blind spots that I felt obligated to fill.

Black Sabbath- Black Sabbath (1970)
General Impressions: Listen, any person who likes heavy music at all should never be dumb enough to write off Black Sabbath. I’ve listened to Paranoid and Master of Reality and Vol. 4 and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Sabotage and the first two albums with Dio and all those are great, great albums. But I somehow never made my way to their debut, which is pretty much universally referred to as the birth of heavy metal as we know it. And although I liked it, don’t get me wrong, I think it was much more of a blues-rock record than anything else. There are some truly fantastic moments, like “N.I.B.,” but nothing really lives up to what they would come to do next. That is, except for the title track.
Standout Track: “Black Sabbath,” the title track by Black Sabbath, off their eponymous album Black Sabbath, is goddamn incredible. I really missed the boat by not covering it during my horror-in-music Patreon post last October— it is, essentially, Black Sabbath’s attempt to sculpt a six-minute horror short in musical form, and it works spectacularly well. Ozzy isn’t just emoting on this track— he is straight up acting, and he sells his palpable fear so well.

Iron Maiden- Number of the Beast (1982), Piece of Mind (1983), Powerslave (1984)
General Impressions: Again, it was David Anthony who convinced me to give Iron Maiden a real chance. I’ll be honest, what I have heard of Maiden, I’ve enjoyed on a musical level, but I had the absolute most impossible time settling into Bruce Dickinson’s vocals. This time around, I whetted my appetite by sampling their first two albums with Paul Di’Anno, and his pub rock swagger irritated me so much that by the time I got to this three-album run, Dickinson’s operatic melodrama was downright refreshing— plus it fit with the ambition of the music, which is far less focused on heaviness than even Judas Priest (who still sound pretty damn heavy on albums like Sad Wings of Destiny), instead focusing on melodic invention and progressive song structures. Turns out I really like melodic counterpoints between guitar and bass, who knew? Anyway, it was actually a pretty big surprise that I didn’t hate this. The bassist seems to have been a huge, unspoken influence on the bass work of a lot of skate punk too. Aside from that I can absolutely hear how much Metallica ripped this band off as well.
Standout Track: Respectively, “Number of the Beast”— which I’ve always known was a fantastic song— along with “Die with Your Boots On” and, surprisingly to me since it is thirteen minutes long, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” which absolutely earns its runtime.

PROTO-EXTREME METAL

Venom- Welcome to Hell (1981)
General Impressions: This album is shockingly aggressive for its time, and I am very surprised that people who are into early Discharge or MDC do not jock this. There’s so much in the way of uncompromising speed and ugly, abrasive vocals here that feels really ahead of its time— there are crossover thrash albums from the late 80s and early 90s that feels explicitly indebted to this, but I rarely hear those bands cite Venom as an influence. This was a pretty fantastic listen insofar as I was surprised to hear an album this heavy and hard this early in the game.
Standout Track: Lots of people talk about how the members of Venom weren’t that great at their instruments, but the bass breakdown in “One Thousand Days of Sodom” demonstrates so much obvious talent, both in the technical and melodic sense, that it really took me off guard. Said breakdown is followed immediately by a very Kerry King-esque guitar solo, which I can only imagine is influential as hell.

Celtic Frost- Morbid Tales (1984)
General Impressions: I have heard a fair bit of Celtic Frost before, and my general takeaway was that it sounded cool, but I wish the drums had more energy and the vocals sounded a bit less like an apathetic Lemmy. But by the time I had settled into the second or third song here, I’d also settled into the groove of the drums and the vocals had acquired an infectiously phlegmy, gross, and mean quality that was really appealing to me. A slow grower, but one that was worth sticking with for me. Plus, everything from the thrashy fast bits to the slowdowns reeked of Sheer Terror and consequently Hatebreed, who I realized took a lot of influence from this record. Again, really ahead-of-its-time stuff.
Standout Track: “Procreation of the Wicked” is a good one, with lots of dynamic variance. Plus the way he pronounces “procreation”— first syllable like “rock” instead of “toe”— is very amusing (unless I’ve been the one saying it wrong this whole time, which is a definite possibility).

Sodom- In the Sign of Evil (1985)
General Impressions: Maybe it’s because it’s coming in between some records that really took me off guard with how much I enjoyed them, but I was a bit let down by this release. I understand it is very very “proto” and you can find the roots of a lot of death and black metal on this record, but it’s so monotone and lacking in the dynamics, and the lyrics are trying so hard (and are generally intelligible, unfortunately), that I couldn’t help but be a bit let down. I appreciated the maniacal commitment to speed though. I understand that this band vastly improved throughout the years so I will make sure to check out some of their other stuff.
Standout Track: “Witching Metal” has an enjoyably simple, pretty memorable main riff.

Bathory- Under the Sign of the Black Mark (1987)
General Impressions: Apparently this is the last Bathory album before the primary songwriter delved into full Viking territory, so I might end up checking some of that out (because there’s no way it’s as laughable as I’ve been led to believe), but this is, again, surprisingly pretty abrasive and extreme for 1987. Like, I am genuinely surprised at how many of these albums sound truly ahead-of-their-time. That’s probably my hardcore bias talking, which is ironic considering how often hardcore bands rip off metal bands. This is another one where I felt a bit like the vocals were an impediment at first, but I got more and more into them as time went along. I also appreciated that it wasn’t just straight blasting— there were a lot of slower, mid-tempo moments that emphasized mood and atmosphere, and ended up sounding way meaner and more dark and occult, the way I always expect this stuff to sound.
Standout Track: “Call from the Grave” is one of those aforementioned midtempo slammers, and I dug it a lot. Really nasty-sounding main riff, extremely Visigoth-sounding rhythm section, and it was the moment in the album where the vocals really started to click for me. Just totally abrasive and gross-sounding in the coolest way.

Sarcófago- I.N.R.I. (1987)
General Impressions: This is, so far, my favorite discovery throughout this journey. This album sounds so, so, so pissed-off and sad and discontented. One of the song titles, “Deathrash,” gives away its style— to my ears at this point in my journey, this sounds about as far as someone can push thrash metal before it becomes death metal completely— but I was also surprised to hear some really harsh-sounding lows at various points throughout the record and the riffs are all so memorable even though the band keeps throwing them at you at a mile-a-minute pace. There’s a few “fuck you, Jesus Christ” moments that come off so much more anguished and authentic than it does when some suburban punk band does it, because this band is from Brazil and so actually comes from a pretty lengthy legacy of Catholic imperialism. Genuinely rebellious and transgressive stuff for its time here.
Standout Track: I love, love, love the end of “Christ’s Death.” One of the heaviest moments I’ve heard on an album from the 80s for sure, and extremely desperate-sounding. As a whole, this record is a lot less clinical and has much more pathos than I’d previously assumed metal would sound. You know what they say when you assume, though.

THRASH METAL

Exodus- Bonded by Blood (1985)
General Impressions: I have heard the majority of work by Metallica (who have at least three albums I’ve always really enjoyed) and Slayer (who have a litany of excellent, genre-defining moments like the breakdown in “Raining Blood” or the intro to “Seasons In the Abyss” or the chorus in “South of Heaven”), so I figured before I sampled the other two of the Big Four I’d go for the debut album by Exodus, who are the band most often considered for either replacing a member of the Big Four who has fallen from grace or expanding it to the Big Five. This is definitely a fun record— I can always tell I’m going to enjoy a thrash album when the riffs sound like tiny little knives— but it suffers a bit from relying too much on predictable song structures. Choppa-choppa-riff, bridge, alternating guitar solos, finale. But you can’t knock the formula if it works, and it definitely does here. Plus, the vocalist can’t sing but unlike Tom Araya, who also can’t sing but definitely tried to anyway early on, this guy embraces the ugliness of his voice and pushes it into some cool-sounding, broken-glass territory that makes this record sound almost hardcore-adjacent at times aside from the sheer metallic nature of the riffs. Fun stuff!
Standout Track: Probably “No Love,” which does the most to deviate from the formula and has lots of dynamic song structure shifts. Plus the lyrics can be pretty nasty and mean-spirited on this one; they kind of remind me of “I Saw Your Mommy” by Suicidal Tendencies.

Megadeth- Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying? (1986)
General Impressions: I have spent most of my life thinking that Megadeth were horrible and was prepared to dismiss this record with a pithy one-liner, but the first track had remarkably little vocal input from Dave Mustaine (whose vocals really are this album’s weak link) and explored a lot of interesting melodic ideas (there’s even really interesting stuff going on beneath the guitar solos!) so I unfortunately have to honestly engage with this album on an intellectual level. At eight tracks in 36 minutes, it’s unquestionably one of the most accessible albums by a Big Four band, and as long as you ignore Mustaine’s wrestler-on-helium vocals, it’s a pretty fun ride with lots of interesting directions to take and a new hook every 30 seconds or so.
Standout Track: The ending of “Black Friday” fucking rules. Well-executed gang vocals and tiny, speedy palm-muted guitars emphasize how aggressive and simultaneously catchy it is, and it’s the best example of Megadeth’s strengths on this record.

Kreator- Pleasure to Kill (1986)
General Impressions: Hoo boy. I knew the European thrash bands had a reputation for being more extreme than the American bands right out of the gate, but this is absolutely unhinged. I was a little worried looking at the near-hour runtime, but every song on this record is unbelievably heavy— much like the Sarcófago record, it feels like the absolute furthest you can push conventional thrash metal before it becomes something else completely. The vocals sound genuinely threatening and furious without coming off forced at all, and the songs just refuse to let up. Every single track ups the ante— whether in speed or aggression (there are borderline-breakdown slower moments on here that just feel like they want to punch you in the nose). This shit makes the Big Four sound like John Denver. If I were alive in 1986 and heard this record I would have felt like I was dying.
Standout Track: Every song here is excellent, but I have to give a shoutout to penultimate track “Take Their Lives” for the eerie, high-pitched guitar tones about two-thirds of the way into the song. It’s the most creepy and menacing I’ve heard in a metal song before it completely swerves into thrash metal territory, and it’s a great example of how to maintain the mood and atmosphere of heaviness without being conventionally heavy at all times.

Dark Angel- Darkness Descends (1986)
General Impressions: Coming off the heels of Kreator, I found the vocal approach on this record a little underwhelming at first even though it is a massive improvement on most thrash vocals I have heard (predictably, it grew on me a few minutes into the opening track). Still, musically, if I didn’t know any better I would probably assume this was death metal. It’s a great melding of technicality and aggression that honestly recalls some of the better crossover stuff I have heard (Evildead or Cryptic Slaughter’s Money Talks for example) except with much thicker, darker production. I also can’t deny the power of this album’s speed. These motherfuckers are playing way, way faster than most of their 1986 contemporaries without sacrificing any of the intricacy of their riffs (and, importantly, the riffs are never more intricate than they are fun and aggro) and that’s really impressive. When the album does slow down, it does so just a few paces, and only for some really mean-sounding grooves. Undeniably an extremely impressive record, and again, I’m taken aback by just how damn good the production sounds. If it was released last year it would sound completely current. My only complaint is that I wish the bass work was spotlighted as much as it is on Among the Living (see below) because the bass here is absolutely excellent.
Standout Track: With only seven tracks at a concise 34 minutes, there are literally no songs here that fall below the level of “excellent,” but the relatively mammoth-length (over eight minutes long) “Black Prophecies” is incredible in both its depth and focus. It’s immaculately constructed— structured around one central idea rather than a bunch of different parts all jammed together with reckless abandon— and smartly develops itself over its runtime without ever dipping in intensity. Honorable mention to the closer “Perish In Flames” which, even on an album as fast and intense as this, is faster and more intense than should be physically possible.

Anthrax- Among the Living (1987)
General Impressions: According to David Anthony, this is actually the classic thrash record that revival bands like Municipal Waste and even Power Trip pull from the most. I’m not sure I 100% agree with that assessment, but he definitely knows better than me in that regard. In any case, this record is kind of the exact middle ground between NYHC and NWOBHM—you have lots of stomp riffs and overbearing gang vocals, but also complex and fulfilling song structures and solos along with Joey Belladonna’s vocals, which didn’t make me involuntarily grit my teeth like Mustaine, but definitely made me roll my eyes at several points. Anthrax suffer a bit from Long Song Syndrome— this has the same amount of songs as Bonded by Blood but is at least ten minutes longer— but they do their best to earn the length. Plus, this is definitely a bassist’s thrash album; there are so many moments of melodic complexity and technical mastery in the bass department that really impressed me, and I appreciated how the bass sat in the mix (especially considering how much the bass can take a backseat in a lot of the thrash I’ve listened to previously).
Standout Track: I was tempted to name a few others, but I have to give it up for “Caught In a Mosh,” which truly synthesizes Dumb Guy Energy with ambitious musicianship and has some really catchy moments in between fun, freewheeling solos. It’s probably their best-known song aside from “Bring the Noise” with Public Enemy, and it definitely deserves that distinction.

Sacrifice- Forward to Termination (1987)
General Impressions: This sounds like how everyone says Slayer sounds— unremittingly aggressive and completely lacking in bullshit. I don’t know if it’s because they are Canadian, but the vocalist doesn’t sound too corny or annoying either; again, very much like how I always imagined Tom Araya would sound from people’s descriptions. But please don’t take this as me saying this band sounds an awful lot like Slayer. They definitely have their own identity, and it’s one that is built around riffs. They absolutely do not fuck around with those here. With the exception of the centerpiece “Flames of Armageddon,” most songs here hover around a relatively accessible three- or four-minute mark, making it an accessible and breezy listen at only ten tracks (the opener is a minute-long intro and still finds time to build up and smoke out) and definitely a breather after the overwhelming intensity and focus of Kreator and Dark Angel. Sacrifice, for the most part, get in, make their point very effectively, and get the fuck out.
Standout Track: “The Entity” is a track that does mid-tempo and slower riffs more than most tracks on this album, and is all the better for it. There’s some really nifty bass spotlights on this track (always a highlight for me, as I’m sure you can tell) but I also appreciate how well-paced this song is between its various speeds and tones. It builds up and pays off in all the best places. But even individual tracks aside, this is another remarkably consistent album in a string of remarkably consistent thrash albums. I’m really glad I decided to do this.

Sepultura- Arise (1991)
General Impressions: My expectations were high coming into this album— I’ve never heard anything by Sepultura before, and anything up to and including Roots is generally regarded as a thrash/death classic, but this is the one that I most often hear referred to as their best. All things considered, it does not sound quite as pissed-off as I was led to believe it would, but it’s definitely still plenty angry, and the musicianship and production are both crisp, tight, dry, and polished. There are several moments of really intense groove on this album (that fucking breakdown in “Dead Embryonic Cells,” holy fucking shit), but it’s not overtly focused on that; principally, this album takes a lot of the sounds I’ve heard in the previous thrash and extreme metal albums I’ve listened to so far and makes them sound hooky and passionate. All that being said, I didn’t love this like I wanted to at first, but as the album kept going and I kept getting more drawn into its world, its little eccentric touches (that odd-sounding, super-melodic solo a little before the soft bridge and gnarly breakdown in “Desperate Cry,” for example— and the song only gets weirder, heavier, and more intriguing after that) kept appealing to me and drawing me in even more. By the end, I was completely on board. This album is as close to a masterpiece as any I’ve written about here yet. Plus Max Cavalera is an excellent vocalist for this kind of music.
Standout Track: This one feels absolutely impossible. There is not one dead second in “Subtraction”— it is one of the catchiest and most bullshit-free tour de forces on this record— but then you also have the expansive “Altered State,” which incorporates Latin percussion to delightfully spacey effect before heading wholesale into speedy airtight aggression, Gamera-sized riffs, and one of the weirdest, coolest guitar melodies I’ve ever heard in my life before the solo, and then there is also closer “Infected Voice” which takes all the hardest elements of the last eight tracks and boils it down into three and a half minutes with zero breathing room. I cannot believe I missed the boat on this record. Every track is a goddamn keeper.

INDUSTRIAL METAL

Because most of my recommendations were for death metal or death metal-adjacent acts, I wanted to make an effort to listen to at least one album from a different subgenre, so I went with this album from Godflesh for industrial metal since it is pretty well-regarded and is also ex-Napalm Death (which is a reason that I will be taking a look at Cathedral later on). Originally I also had a Helloween album here so I could take a look at power metal, but it bummed me out so much that I struck it from this newsletter because I didn’t want to spend too much time on overwhelming negativity.

Godflesh- Streetcleaner (1989)
General Impressions: Extremely cold and clinical, which adds to its overall unsettling atmosphere, but the production has a really impressive level of thickness and depth to it that literally makes it feel like it’s weighing down on your ears while you listen. The vocals sound just slightly inhuman, in a very uncanny way; this is definitely an album to listen to if you feel like you have had too fun of a day. The programmed drums do not like you but refuse to let you sit still— dragging you forward at a pace just slow enough to be hypnotic but just fast enough to maintain attention— while the guitar is overwhelmingly focused on texture and attack rather than sculpting specific riffs, meaning the songs’ directions are mostly dictated by the bass, which goes about proceedings with the tone and attitude of a junkyard dog’s growls. I was led to believe that this album was much more artsy wank than out-and-out aggression, but it manages to be both antagonistic and infectiously rhythmic all at once (I could absolutely imagine dancing to this in a club on Goth Night). Definitely one of my favorite discoveries from this expedition.
Standout Track: This is one of those albums that just feels extremely vibey and so is best listened to in its entirety (the 66-minute CD release is the way I went— many of the tracks bleed into each other very smoothly as well), but the spooky bad-time echoes and wooziness of “Head Dirt” followed up by the confrontational dance grooves, guitar squall, and unnerving samples of “Devastator” and the spindly slow-burn fury of “Mighty Test Krusher” definitely stood out to me as something special.

GROOVE METAL/DJENT

Meshuggah- Destroy Erase Improve (1995)
General Impressions: I am not actually sure what to call this at all. It’s not thrash, it’s not death metal, it’s not really groove metal, and it’s formative for djent but does that make this album djent in and of itself, in comparison to later works by this same band? I really don’t know. Honestly, part of me wants to call it mathcore because it sounds like Calculating Infinity really just copied this band’s homework and added in more circus-y guitar parts. In any case, this is fucking great. The guitar work alternately sounds like a ticking clock and a swarm of bees, the drums sound like the world’s angriest typewriter, and the bass work is overflowing with bubbly, riffy goodness. Meshuggah Man sounds a lot like Jamey Jasta to my ears, also. I am pretty dumb but apparently there are a lot of “polyrhythms” on this album and they are very cool. I would like more of them, please. All flippant comments aside, this is a powerful-sounding record— extremely clean and precise production and performances, but never lacking in passion, particularly in the vocals— with inventiveness to spare. I feel like people should emphasize that for as complex as this album seems to have been to make, it’s also extremely hooky and accessible as well, at least for a stupid hardcore kid like me. Another high-grade record.
Standout Track: While part of me wants to give it to the languid beauty of “Acrid Placidity,” the show is absolutely stolen by track three, “Slow Burn.” There are lots of moving parts and turning gears happening in this song, but it all coalesces into something that’s as overbearingly heavy as it is memorable. And surprisingly, for an album with so much time-signature fuckery, this is definitely the dancefloor justice track on the record for me.

DEATH METAL

Deicide- Deicide (1990)
General Impressions: Well, everything about this feels extremely Slayer, down to the way the solos are used (more as chaotic mood accents, rather than as the melodic or structural focal point of each song), the “Raining Blood”-esque riff in the title track, and the lyrical focus, which is virulently anti-theistic in a way that splits the difference between immaturity, blind rage, and edgy charm. This is a pretty fast-paced record, too; several songs don’t even reach the three-minute mark, and every song has several discrete sections, never spending too long on any one motif so nothing ever gets played out. That isn’t to say this record doesn’t develop its ideas, because it does, and the riffs absolutely get time to breathe, but it doesn’t waste time on monotony. I’m also not sure how I feel about the vocals— Glen Benton is, again, channeling Tom Araya pretty strongly, but this is also definitely one of the earliest examples I’ve heard of the double-layering-shrieks-and-lower-growls vocal approach, and it gives a really sharp edge to the already pretty edgelord-y (in a fun way) lyrics. Having already heard a lot of albums that are considered foundational to death metal— Seven Churches, Horrified, Scream Bloody Gore, Altars of Madness, Slowly We Rot— this album definitely feels like another step in the development of death metal’s voice, and it is apparently one of the best-selling albums in the genre. Slayer-isms aside, I appreciate all the interesting arrangements and restless creativity on display here; I just feel like a lot of these ideas are ones that will be more completely developed later on.
Standout Track: There are lots of great individual moments here, like the aforementioned “Raining Blood”-esque breakdown in the title track, or the apocalyptic opening of closer “Crucifixation,” but I gotta give it up for the Evil Dead II-inspired “Dead by Dawn,” which is the most restless song on the album in terms of musical ideas and also features a really catchy moment where Benton— using the previously-discussed double-track vocals which I now can only assume are a deliberate attempt to sound like the Deadites— replicates the classic titular taunting chant from the movie. Great stuff.

Obituary- Cause of Death (1990)
General Impressions: This album made me feel like I was actively decomposing in the Everglades. Like I said before, I’ve already listened to Slowly We Rot, and while I definitely liked it, I felt like the guitar tone, the vocals, and the song structures all needed to be polished and tightened up. Well, I got exactly what I asked for here— the guitar tone feels humid and overbearing and the vocals are emotional, visceral, and feral as hell. Most importantly, the songs are great— catchy, memorable, heavy-as-fuck death metal tracks that are mostly focused on chunky, soupy, mid-tempo riffs. Even in the moments when the album does speed up, this is the first post-advent-of-thrash record on this list to not sound anything like thrash whatsoever (with the minor exceptions of the deceptively simple “Circle of the Tyrants,” which is a Celtic Frost cover, and the fast-as-hell “Find the Arise,” which sounds like it was recorded in a completely different session and features a completely different vocal approach). This is a death metal record— replete with winding, twisty solos that flesh each song out with aplomb— and it’s all the better for it.
Standout Track: I still haven’t tired of seeing all the places where my favorite hardcore bands have taken their ideas from; “Chopped In Half” is literally three-and-a-half minutes of ideas that have been completely stolen by other bands, and it is wonderful. Succinct, aggressive, effortlessly memorable, and again— genuinely heavy as fuck.

Autopsy- Mental Funeral (1991)
General Impressions: The first thing I noticed about this record was that the death metal vocals were really codified by now— the vocalist here sounds somewhere between injured bear and caveman, and is pretty much what I hear in my head when I think “death metal vocals.” I also really like the thick, buzzy guitar tone and the clattering drum sound on this record a lot; it gives the whole thing a very intimate “chilling in the basement and smoking weed with a cheesy horror movie on in the background” vibe. And I do mean smoking weed— this is, I’ve gathered, something of a stoner-death album? There is a bong hit sample on this record, and in between the speedy sections and the (refreshingly simple) solos, there are moments of both s-l-o-w riffage and straight-up rock’n’roll boogie licks. I’m honestly pretty impressed with the rate of sheer catchy moments on the death metal records I’ve heard so far; it makes the whole thing whip by at a pleasant pace, and helps give the songs individual identities after they start to blend together. Unfortunately, this record does kind of start to blend as time goes on. Still, it doesn’t hurt the listenability, and it’s definitely short enough that I can see myself returning often.
Standout Track: “In the Grip of Winter” seems to balance all the things I mentioned this record does— conventionally heavy and fast death metal, groovy rock riffs, doomy passages, and a goofy horror-movie aesthetic— the best, and stands as, in my opinion, the most memorable individual song on the record.

Atheist- Unquestionable Presence (1991)
General Impressions: This doesn’t sound quite as much like Dillinger Escape Plan shamelessly ripped it off as the Meshuggah record, but it definitely feels formative for mathcore. Actually, what with the bright guitar tone and spacious production, I can’t help but feel like this record sounds like a feel-good summertime jazz record, even with all the death metal trappings. I mean, yes, there are definitely heavy moments and even a few breakdowns, but I was genuinely surprised at how authentically jazzy, bouncy, and intricate the rhythm section felt here. The vocals aren’t the low, brutal growls of Autopsy, instead being more of a gnarled bark, but they work really well with the melodic sensibilities of the songs, all of which are really cleverly structured. One thing that really made me enamored of this record was how restless it felt— it never really did the same thing twice, always switching up at least one element even if it was repeating a riff, and the songs are endless spirals and Möbius strips of creativity and excitability. Again, this is as close to a feel-good death metal record as I’ve ever heard, even if the lyrics, which are mostly pretty intelligible, are a touch on the gloomy side. (I just learned that apparently this album was written and recorded in the aftermath of a band member’s death, so that explains the mix of hopeful and melancholy that I get from the atmosphere. My condolences, dudes.)
Standout Track: I admittedly really liked the closer, “And the Psychic Saw,” but I think I am going to have to give it to “Your Life’s Retribution,” which has a really cool and lengthy solo section that feels completely natural (not show-offy at all, honestly) while the song itself continues endlessly evolving beneath it. One of the coolest moments on the record, in all honesty. However, again, this is definitely a “listen to the whole thing” album, given that it’s only like thirty minutes long.

Dismember- Like an Ever Flowing Stream (1991)
General Impressions: I should first note that I listened to the eight-song original version of the album, not either of the versions with extra tracks, so this was another brisk 30 minute affair. I like it a lot that all these death metal bands get in and get the fuck out without any waffling. Anyway, I have definitely heard most of Entombed’s albums, so I was expecting something in that vein, and while this is absolutely similar to Left Hand Path (an album that I really, really like), this record completely shattered that ceiling on quality. There is this disgusting groovy breakdown about three minutes into the opening track that sounds exactly like where Harms Way were pulling inspiration from circa Isolation. There’s also a couple blisteringly short and sweet tracks here, like “Soon to Be Dead” and the utterly nauseating “Skin Her Alive,” that prove Dismember are completely capable of making their point within the confines of two minutes. The vocals are furious, the bass is thick and threatening, the guitar sound is just as good as on Left Hand Path and churns out memorable riffs with ease, and the drum patterns remind me of crust punk more than anything else. Honestly, the arrangements of all these songs are extremely hardcore punk-esque in that they eschew all sense of traditional pop song structure but still focus on instantly memorable sections that feel engineered to get people dancing. Make no mistake, though; this still doesn’t really feel like hardcore at all whatsoever, and that’s fine. These are some of the hardest-hitting and yet artfully-constructed songs I’ve heard on this journey yet, and I would definitely go so far as to say this is in the top 10 of records I’ve listened to for this.
Standout Track: “And So Is Life” is the most effective and tightly-written song in a record full of very effective and tightly-written songs. Sorry to keep bringing up the Entombed comparisons (although it is warranted since apparently Nicke Andersson played nearly all the leads on this record), but this feels like it accomplishes all the same things as the title track from Left Hand Path in half the time, mournfully-melodic-yet-still-angry-sounding bridge section and all. Honorable mention to the band’s theme song “Dismembered,” which also nails the melody and comes damn close to sounding utterly beautiful before one of the absolute fastest and heaviest sections I’ve ever heard in my life comes in. Just totally crushing. Closer “In Death’s Sleep” rules too, especially that slow section at the end. Honestly, 10/10 record.

Death- Human (1991)
General Impressions: 1991 was really a banner year for death metal, huh? The drums on this album sound fucking phenomenal— clean, fast, and fresh. The only other album by Death I’ve heard before is Scream Bloody Gore, and by this point Chuck Schuldiner’s vocals appear to have really improved and matured into something completely aggressive and unique. The musicianship has also taken a turn— again, this doesn’t sound anything like thrash metal, instead opting for creative time signature shakeups and weird, angular guitar work that sounds unearthly and alien yet still melodic and compelling. If I have any complaints about the production and overall sound of this album, it’s that I wish the bass were more pronounced since I think its interplay with the machine-gun drum patterns would sound fantastic, but the low end on the guitar sound more than makes up for it. Normally when you hear a band say “This is both our heaviest and most melodic material yet” you have to brace yourself for a mess, but this is certainly a completely creative and genuine fusion of heaviness and melody that sounds like absolutely nothing else I’ve really ever heard before. I don’t know how many times I can kick myself for not getting into metal before now, but I will continue to do so as long as I continue to discover albums this impressive.
Standout Track: “See Through Dreams” contains the highest quotient of mind-bending melodic guitar parts and crushingly heavy sections per capita. The ripshit-good solo followed by the slowdown at the two-minute mark is incredible and the song as a whole puts the “brutal” in “brutally efficient.” Add in the occasional gloriously wonky riff and loopy space-cadet lyrics and you have the DNA of a perfect death metal song, for me at least. Honorable mention to “Cosmic Dreams,” which is spacey and trippy as hell (especially that terrifying solo near the end) and almost sounds like psych-death to my ears.

Hey, everybody, this draft is nearing the email length limit, so I’m going to continue this later in the week and probably throughout the coming month, but I hope you enjoyed the beginning stages of my bizarre journey through metal. It’s honestly been way more fun and fulfilling than I thought it would be and literally felt like someone giving my music-appreciation battery a jump. Stay tuned for the next in this series, where I will begin covering black metal as well as albums by Morbid Angel, Cryptopsy, Necrophagist, Blood Incantation, and more. As always, thank y’all and I love you.

-xoxo, Ellie

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