Death metal as we know it began crawling from the swamps of Florida in the mid-80s, but at the end of the decade a mutant variation emerged on the other side of the Atlantic – specifically in Sweden, thanks to bands such as Nihilist, Unleashed, Grave and Entombed. In 2008, members of the Swedish scene looked back on the beginnings of a movement that would twist metal into gnarly new shapes.

Remember when death metal was about big ugly riffs and spine-chilling leads rather than an attempt to cram as many notes and beats into a song as possible with the aid of Pro Tools? When albums were filled with memorable tunes and atmosphere instead of monotonous blastfests, one barely distinguishable from another?

In Sweden they never forgot. Indeed, during the 20 years since that distinctly dirty, punishing sound first crawled from the depths of Stockholm, the beast has remained alive, kept in fighting fitness by the pioneers who first brought it to life. And let’s be clear, we’re really talking about the original, Stockholm-originated style rather than the ‘Gothenburg sound’ that arose somewhat later.

In contrast to the melodic and technical flourishes found there, the original Swedish sound – made famous by the likes of Dismember, Entombed, Grave and Unleashed – is characterised by big, dirty and generally downtuned guitars, pounding drum beats, a taste for morbid groove and relatively straightforward song structures. The fact that most of the bands central to its creation stuck to their guns enabled it to forge a clear identity, one which stands in welcome contrast to the cold, technical direction US bands – and those inspired by US bands – have tended to follow.

It’s ironic that in many ways the Swedish death metal sound was actually spawned via attempts to copy the early American death metal bands. Equally interesting is the degree to which the explosion of the genre in Sweden can be attributed to one individual – namely Nicke Anderson. Now an ex-drummer of Entombed and guitarist/vocalist for garage rock heroes The Hellacopters, back in 1987 young Nicke was still at school and playing in both a hardcore band, Brainwarp, and a nameless thrash-orientated metal band.

One of the few people to have accessed the early death metal recordings from America via tape trades, Nicke introduced them to his bandmates and made a move that proved to be more significant than he could ever have imagined at the time. Combining the projects to form the now-legendary Nihilist, Nicke created a band that would directly inspire an entire movement. Taking influence from USDM, English grind such as Napalm Death, and the punk scene he had grown up with, Nicke and his bandmates began to create something new.

“Once you hear a good thing you want your friends to listen to it,” laughs Nicke. “We were at least amongst the first to pick up on that underground American scene with Death, Possessed, Repulsion and Autopsy. Prior to that we listened to any fast music, really, from Slayer to DRI, and bought albums by Kreator, Sodom, Testament. But when we got into this death metal underground we felt nothing could top that. If you were into heavy music, once you heard it, there was no turning back. We’re talking weeks or months of evolution, everything happened quickly, but thrash metal was out the window for us. It seemed silly music, for wimps.”

Still scrawling the name Nihilist on his schoolbooks “to see how it would look amongst my favourite bands”, Anderson’s ambitions at the time were only to pay homage to the bands he had discovered from the States, and certainly neither he nor his bandmates considered themselves pioneers.

“People talk about ‘Swedish death metal’,” he explains, “but all that was really just us trying to copy the underground American scene. It sounds pretty much like early Autopsy, Repulsion, Death… I would say it’s a really naïve copy. We were trying to copy it and we couldn’t and that’s what became the sound of Swedish death metal. In America it quite quickly became technical and we couldn’t follow that. The simple stuff, that’s the Swedish thing.”

While proto-thrash/death bands Merciless and Morbid already existed in Sweden, the real birth of Swedish death was Nihilist’s second demo, Only Shreds Remain, recorded in the iconic Sunlight Studios, soon to be used by every band in the scene. Shreds… introduced a gritty, chunky, mid-range heavy sound throughout, especially in the guitars, a simple move attributed both to producer Tomas Skogsberg and guitarist Leif ‘Leffe’ Cuzner (who sadly died in 2006), and would become the norm amongst bands in the country.

“Boss had a pedal called Heavy Metal,” explains Nicke. “I don’t think they do it any more, the closest is Metal Zone, but the ‘mid-knob’ was very useful for the guitar sound. We should have got sponsored,” he laughs, “and even more Dismember – they took it even further.”

Several other influential elements were present in this morbid blueprint, not least the drum patterns which – perhaps influenced by Nicke’s hardcore past – were notably less complex and more organic than the constant blasting common in the genre.

Nihilist certainly made an impact, but the life of the band would soon come to an end only two years after its inception. Disagreements regarding direction were arising between Nicke and Johnny Hedlund – a slightly older musician who had joined the band after the first demo – and Nicke took the decision to finish the project, mainly as a way of parting company with Johnny.

“We basically didn’t get along with Johnny, or maybe I didn’t get along with Johnny,” he admits. “I had songs fully produced in my head before I even showed any riffs to anyone and that didn’t work ’cos he really wanted to write stuff. And he’d show us his stuff and we didn’t like it. I mean, we were young, we could probably have done this a better way, but we split the band up, called Johnny to say the band was no more, then, like three days later, started rehearsing again. I mean, if Johnny was pissed off, I fully understand it.”

Reforming Nihilist under the name Entombed (but with essentially the same logo) the band began to work on new material, recording a demo the same year (1989) before signing to Earache and releasing their indisputably classic debut, Left Hand Path. And if the departed Johnny was pissed off he certainly didn’t let it slow him down, quickly forming a new band, Unleashed, who after three demos in 1990, signed to Century Media and released the acclaimed Where No Life Dwells the following year.

“With Unleashed we had a vision,” explains Johnny. “We knew that the band was obviously going to develop, but we agreed that we would always play this type of death metal. If we wanted to change style then we had to form another band with another name.”

Unleashed was clearly a more serious band for Johnny, who explains that the Nihilist years were more about a ‘party vibe’, and are notable for introducing Viking themes to the scene, a subject picked up in later years by Amon Amarth amongst others.

“Obviously Bathory was an influence, but even at school I was pissed off that we had to learn about everyone else’s beliefs but there was nothing about the Viking traditions. In our very early days it was positive and people were interested. There were years when the right wing movement was stronger and those bands wanted to sing about it as well, but eventually people realised that there were other bands who could speak about Thor’s hammer other than a bunch of low-rate Nazis.”

By 1991 the Swedish scene was becoming internationally recognised. As well as Unleashed’s debut came debuts by Grave (Into The Grave) and Dismember (Like An Ever Flowing Stream), the latter band formed from the ashes of Carnage, another seminal act operating from 1989 until 1991, when their guitarist, one Michael Amott, joined Carcass.

1991 would be a peak, however, and the momentum was beginning to slow. A few notable efforts appeared in the years that followed by bands such as Desultory, Necrophobic and Carbonized (a band featuring, amongst other things, future members of Therion) but great demo bands such as Grotesque, Interment and Evocation were calling it a day.

Around this time, generally in the city of Gothenburg, bands were beginning to inject more melody into their death metal. Primarily created by Dissection and At The Gates, as well as bands such as Dark Tranquillity, Eucharist and Unanimated, this style of melodic death metal was probably made most famous by In Flames and it is they, along with ATG, whose influence can be seen widely in heavy music today, not least in the metalcore scene.

In the mid-90s, however, it was still Entombed who were most successful, riding high on death metal’s brief major label wave, signing to Columbia in America and appearing on MTV following their killer rock’n’roll-tinged third album, Wolverine Blues. In fact, strange as it seems now, when Max left Sepultura, Entombed genuinely looked set to fill the gap. Almost overnight, however, the nu-metal scene appeared and bands like Entombed were suddenly yesterday’s news. For his part, Nicke was somewhat uncomfortable with the success anyway and was beginning to tire of the music he had help create.

“It was almost like we were outside, looking in,” he ponders. “We got to got to ride in limos to those Columbia meetings, which we enjoyed, but it wasn’t really us. We were just touring and touring and we didn’t really ask ourselves why. Did we really enjoy it? I don’t think so. I mean it’s great to play live but it just went on and on. People also started comparing us to bands like Pantera and I never really cared for them at all… I dunno, maybe I’m just picky. I guess I didn’t feel like I had any more songs like that in me. It turns out I did… but it took a while.”

A decade after leaving Entombed, Nicke has returned to the death metal fold. with Death Breath, a new two-man project that has seen live guests including members of Merciless and Repulsion. Former contemporaries Entombed, Grave Dismember and Unleashed are all still releasing records.

“I think we stayed true to our word,” says Johnny Hedlund. “We still play the same style 20 years later. It’s great ’cos we’ve been growing up with each other but we haven’t treated each other as competitors, it’s more like a friendship, we share the same destiny. We can sit round the table with a beer and say, ‘Well, in 10 years we’ll all be a bit older but we’re gonna be here anyway, playing the same music and in probably the same bands!”

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 178, April 2008

Fast-rising Arizonan death metallers Gatecreeper came into 2024 with a mission: to release an album that would flex their biggest sonic evolution yet, and make a clear statement about modern extreme metal’s capacity to sound bigger, badder and catchier than before.

“That was our goal, to put out an album like that,” confirms frontman Chase Mason. “We felt like everything was aligned for us to take a big step and take some risks.”

Those risks paid off handsomely. Third album Dark Superstition, the band’s first for Nuclear Blast, wasn’t just one of the best heavy metal albums of last year, but one of the more exciting and ambitious metal records of recent years full-stop. Expanding on their fearsome, Sweden-indebted death metal template, the Phoenix crew added flourishes of rumbling doom, crusty hardcore, grandiose gothic metal, epic folk and old-school heavy metal thunder for a riveting and relentlessly catchy LP. Gatecreeper wear their influences on their sleeves (and heads: Chase sporse a Paradise Lost cap as he talks to us via Zoom), but few bands in the scene manage to pool their inspirations into something so fresh and huge-sounding.

“We’re a very referential band,” Chase admits. “All of our favourite bands, at some point, tried something new. We figured that this was our time to do that.”

Reuniting with producer Kurt Ballou and bringing in Fred Estby of Swedish death metal royalty Dismember to help hone some of Gatecreeper’s new material (“I don’t want to say I was starstruck, but I definitely had a lot of questions for him!”), Chase says his lyrical concerns were superstition and the supernatural. One track in particular, the sinister, lumbering Flesh Habit, with its darkly evocative lyrics (‘Every night I need to feed / Burning like a fire inside my veins’), draws the theme into sharp focus.

“One topic that I was really diving into was vampires,” he explains enthusiastically. “The idea of a vampire having this need to feed, for blood or flesh. I was able to put myself into those shoes based on my personal experiences with substance abuse.”

Having worked with one death metal hero and toured with some more in 2024 (he speaks with reverence about Gatecreeper supporting In Flames across the United States in May), it’s clear Chase believes Dark Superstition succeeded in its mission and then some. But he’s looking ahead. Gatecreeper wrapped up 2024 with a European headlining tour, and this year is about continuing to bring death metal to as many people as possible.

“In the past, there have been bands like Slipknot, they have blastbeats in their songs,” he muses. “But there’s obviously a much lower ceiling for a death metal band. Cannibal Corpse have made it to a level where they’re playing to thousands of people every night. How much bigger can you go? How much higher can you take that?” Perhaps we’re about to find out.

Dark Superstition is out now. Gatecreeper play Sonic Temple and Welcome To Rockville in the US this May before supporting Arch Enemy on tour across Europe this Autumn

Is there a bastion of the metal world so tenacious or resilient as death metal? Almost 40 years on from the release of Possessed's Seven Churches, the genre continues to thrive in new and exciting ways, its many subschools producing some of the most boundary-pushing music in the metal sphere.

Whether it's the unhinged intensity of grindcore, the ascendant rise of deathcore or just old school veterans like Deicide and Nile putting out top-tier material, there's still plenty to get excited about when it comes to death metal releases. That in mind, we've rounded up some of the year's biggest talking points to offer a selection of the finest death metal had to offer in 2024.

10. Nails – Every Bridge Burning (Nuclear Blast)

Eight years on from the fercocious assault-on-the-senses that was You Will Never Be One Of Us, grindcore brutes Nails stormed their way back into the hearts - and perforated eardrums - of metalheads with comeback Every Bridge Burning.

An apt title for the return of a band that had since been whittled down to just vocalist/guitarist Todd Jones, Bridge... was no less acerbic nor brilliantly disorienting than its predecessors. Flying through ten songs in a little under 18 minutes, Nails even aded a bit of speed metal to their repertoire with the flashy guitar work of Give Me The Painkiller. Nifty. Rich Hobson

9. Job For A Cowboy – Moon Healer (Metal Blade)

19 years ago, Job For A Cowboy were at the forefront of extreme music’s most basic and controversial genre: the pig-squealing, breakdown-ing deathcore. The band couldn’t be further from that now, though. Where their Doom EP reduced death metal to its basest elements, 2024’s Moon Healer was an ultra-sophisticated tech-death thrillride.

On their first album in a decade, Job built a labyrinth of riffs, reinforced by some virtuosic bass chops and accelerating-and-decelerating percussion. It wasn’t all brains over brawn, though. Opener Beyond The Chemical Doorway and finale The Forever Rot especially offered plenty of hard, primal grooves. A PhD in music theory is not required when it comes to appreciating what this lot do – and hopefully we needn’t another decade to hear more of it. Matt Mills

8. Nile – The Underworld Awaits Us All (Napalm)

Who's your... erm, mummy? Over 30 years in, there's no question on who metal's premiere Egyptologists are, Karl Sanders and co. still plunging the depths of the Underworld for their tenth full-length.

The results are predictably brilliant. Thundering, imperious and delivered with an unrelenting sense of intensity, The Underworld Awaits Us All explodes with technical brilliance, its many blastbeats underpinned by darting guitars that speak to a level of veteran accomplishment the band have long since achieved. Rich Hobson

7. Meth. - SHAME (Prosthetic)

A punishingly hateful mixture of sludge, noise and death metal, SHAME is less an album than an endurance test for listeners who's souls aren't already black as tar. Abyssal and unrelenting, each track drops like a lead weight on the spine, utterly flooring in just how bleak it all is.

Which naturally means, it's fucking fantastic. If you find yourself turned off by the more cartoonish aspects of goregrind and deathcore's shift to symphonic cleanliness, this record is a headlong drop into slop and muckiness that has us wallowing like pigs in the proverbial shit. Glorious. Rich Hobson

6. Ulcerate – Cutting The Throat Of God (Debemur Morti)

Ulcerate make whatever the opposite of “casual listening” is. Over two decades, the New Zealanders have refined a particularly choking strain of death metal, mixing it with noise and sludge to ensure there’s zero breathing room.

For album number seven, more melody was added to the band’s cocktail of hideous things, but it didn’t make their music any easier to swallow. Although the title track opened with one of their most tasteful and immediate riffs, it only made the following barrage of texture, roars and speeding percussion all the more immense. With To See Death Just Once layering slow, dissonant guitars atop blast beats and The Dawn Is Hollow juddering between aggression and ambience, Ulcerate’s placement as masters of their own subgenre was reaffirmed. Matt Mills

5. Escuela Grind – Dreams On Algorithms (Mnrk Heavy)

Escuela Grind did not stop in 2024. In January, the grindcore nasties leaned into their death metal side on an EP ingeniously called Death Metal. They then toured their asses off for months, before striking a crescendo with Dreams On Algorithms in October.

The New Englanders’ third album smacked with more of the gut-churning deathgrind they’ve always dealt, but also broadened their horizons. This was felt most strongly on finale Turbulence, when singer Katerina Economou flaunted their melodic singing for the first time ever. Beefy hardcore stomps and breakdowns appeared throughout the 10 tracks, which together contemplated the nature of algorithms and how they shape modern society. Smart and primal at the same time, Escuela’s latest reaffirmed the unit as ones to watch. Matt Mills

4. The Black Dahlia Murder – Servitude (Metal Blade)

After the tragic passing of Trevor Strnad, The Black Dahlia Murder found the best way to pay tribute to their fallen frontman was by producing an album worthy of their own legacy. And good goddamn if they didn't do just that with Servitude.

A pinwheeling, frenzied charge through realms of extremity that spanned from the technical to blackened and even melodic, the album reaffirms everything great about The Black Dahlia Murder whilst providing them throughlines to ever-grander levels of songwriting, guitarist Brian Eschbach stepping into the role of vocalist with gusto. Rich Hobson

3. Fleshgod Apocalypse – Opera (Nuclear Blast)

Opera was the album where Fleshgod Apocalypse discovered nuance. Previously famed for making symphonic death metal as subtle as a nuclear holocaust, the Italians explored new, emotional ideas, inspired by the near-death of their singer/bassist.

This concept piece narrated Francesco Paoli’s life-threatening 2021 climbing accident, with Morphine Waltz using the band’s brutality to convey his drug-addled delirium while hospitalised. Elsewhere, though, Matricide 8.21 offered a surprisingly bittersweet chorus where Paoli apologised for scaring his mum. Till Death Do Us Part marked the apex of the evolution, ending the album on a sombre note where soprano vocalist Veronica Bordacchini stole the show. No question, this was the most emotional and essential material of Fleshgod’s 15-year career. Matt Mills

2. Gatecreeper – Dark Superstition (Nuclear Blast)

Gatecreeper make death metal for the masses. Accessibly stompy drum beats and catchy guitar parts have always been part of their vocabulary, but Dark Superstition made their arena-conquering aspirations clearer than ever.

The Arizonans hired some star talent for album three, with Converge guitarist/producer Kurt Ballou behind the desk and Fred Estby, of Swedish death metal figureheads Dismember, co-writing. They also took inspiration from mid-paced goth music to make their 10 most user-friendly tracks ever. The Black Curtain’s verses marched towards a chorus underlined by heroic lead playing, A Chilling Aura excitingly banged and thrashed, and it’s easy to picture all of it getting festival fields to go apeshit en masse. Matt Mills

1. Blood Incantation – Absolute Elsewhere (Century Media)

With bands like Frozen Soul and Undeath leading the charge for the new wave of old school, it was left to Blood Incantation to show everyone else just how advanced they'd become in the fields of death metal with the release of Absolute Elsewhere.

After taking a sojourn into the realms of synth with 2022's Timewave Zero, the Denver group took their genre experimentation further than ever before with this majestic, unpredictable opus. Split into two major movements - The Stargare and The Message - Blood Incantation craft a sonic odyssey that touches in on their trademark cosmic death metal whilst also incorporating krautrock, prog and psych in a bewilderingly brilliant way.

It's an absolute masterclass, and there could be no doubt about it being the best death metal album of 2024 - especially considering it already bagged Hammer's album of the year. If the enormous crowds that turned out to see the band play at 2024's Roadburn are anything to go by, this band are set to only get bigger. Rich Hobson

Punk legend Iggy Pop has championed one of death metal’s nastiest bands.

On his BBC Radio 6 show on November 3, the former Stooges frontman played To See Death Just Once by New Zealand’s most dissonant trio Ulcerate: a song so long and crushing that he had to split it into two parts and put some post-punk in between.

You can listen to the programme via BBC Sounds until next week.

For those unfamiliar, Ulcerate formed in Auckland in 2000 and have mastered a distinct form of death metal that includes post-metal and noise.

Their latest album (seventh overall), Cutting The Throat Of God, was released in April via Debemur Morti. It received critical acclaim, including a glowing 4.5-star review from Metal Hammer journalist Matt Mills.

“Ulcerate have always been underdogs on account of their sheer extremity and, let’s be honest, Cutting… isn’t going to hoist them to the top of the charts,” Mills wrote. “But, as a statement of these aggressors’ ongoing uniqueness and a meticulous opus of death metal, it deserves to put everyone in heavy music on high alert. This inventive, infectious and nauseating experience is what every brutal band should be gunning to outdo in 2024.”

Discordant death metal notwithstanding, Pop’s Radio 6 show was populated with a host of punk and classic rock artists. The Smiths, Little Richard, Keith Richards and prog veterans Goblin were also heard, although the host delved into the metal underground once more when he played a track from sludge favourites Thou.

Pop, 77, is still very much active as a musician. He released latest album Every Loser in 2023. Produced by Pearl Jam and Ozzy Osbourne collaborator Andrew Watt, it featured Guns N’ Roses Duff Mckagan and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith.

Earlier this month, he announced a show at London’s 10,000-capacity Alexandra Palace to take place in June. `Songs from both his solo career and his stint with the Stooges will be performed.

When Opeth released the track §1 in August, it was their first new music featuring growled vocals in 16 years – but bandleader Mikael Åkerfeldt rejects the suggestion that The Last Will And Testament is a death metal record.

Instead, he says, their 14th LP represents a melding of their earlier aggression with vintage prog. “If you take those vocals away, it’s no big stretch. I think this album is slightly heavier; it’s much darker and evil, but I think they’re the only thing that could keep the prog guys away from this record.

“The rest is business as usual. To be honest, my heart is not in death metal. I’m after some kind of feeling. Music should be an emotional experience; and once I get that, I’m happy.”

He continues: “It’s a pretty happening record – there’s a lot of stuff going on. We don’t linger on parts like we did 20 years ago. I went with the flow of my own restlessness, which has resulted in quite a crazy record.”

Opeth’s progressive influences, and Åkerfeldt’s love for obscure 70s prog records, have taken hold over the past decade and a half. During that time, the hardcore portion of their fanbase has been clamouring for growled vocals to make a comeback. But why now?

“We’ve been doing anniversary shows, so we played a lot of old songs, and I thought my voice sounded good,” he says. “I didn’t have any plans to record with it. But as I started writing the music, I figured that style could be utilised to expand the sonic landscape and give the main character in the story a voice.”

The story unravels in the 1920s, with each track delivered as different paragraphs of a rich, conservative patriarch’s last will and testament. What follows is a slew of secrets, confessions and multilayered plot twists.

“I’ve been interested in the idea of families falling apart; what can make family members hate each other?” he asks. “I saw the Succession TV series and I was fixed to the screen, so I started thinking more and more about writing a concept record; and I went to this idea.”

Prog’s luminary storyteller Ian Anderson provides spoken word sequences as he plays the part of the patriarch – and even adds in a flute solo for good measure. Europe vocalist Joey Tempest also makes an appearance.

“I wouldn’t have guests on the records unless I felt that they could contribute something that I couldn’t,” Åkerfeldt says. “In this case, I don’t have that gravelly old-man voice like Ian. It just made everything so much better.

“I originally only asked for the spoken-word part, then an email comes in, like, ‘Do you need some flute?’ At the time I didn’t have a part, but I wasn’t going to say no! And, of course, in comes this fucking amazing solo.

“I’ve cried to Jethro Tull. Ian’s given me so much joy over the years, it’s incredible. Just to mention his name in the same sentence as this band is incredible. Joey Tempest is the same.”

Recorded at Rockfield Studios in Wales, the album includes co-production credits from both Åkerfeldt and Stefan Boman (Ghost, Graveyard). Opeth return to the UK and Europe in February 2025.

Karl Sanders is the resident mummy master of metal. The driving force and sole constant member of America’s most Egyptology-obsessed death metal band Nile, few musicians in the underground have forged a brand quite like Karl, without the corporate connotations of that word because well, this is death metal.

For over thirty years now his band have delivered mystical brutality ripped straight from the ancient world, credited as helping rejuvenate death metal after its first lull period in the late 90s. With latest album The Underworld Awaits Us All arriving over 27 years since the band’s debut, Hammer caught up with Karl to find out what words of wisdom he had to share.

HISTORY WAS THERE BEFORE DEATH METAL

“I didn’t get really exposed to metal until I was a teenager, but world history I loved from a very early age. I was in fourth grade and had to do a book report on Alexander The Great, and that just fired my brain up. My dad was always watching the epic flicks of the day like Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments, Land Of The Pharaohs, so it was a worm in my brain from an early age.”

THE SEEDS OF NILE WERE SOWN EARLY

“The 80s were a lot of fun. It was a time where everybody had disposable income so everybody was always going out. There were half a dozen places to play in my home town. You could have quite the life playing four nights a week, even as a cover band, but after a while we wanted to write our own songs. You have to start asking yourself, ‘What is it I wanna do? What do we wanna sound like?’ It was a chance meeting with [ex-Morbid Angel frontman] David Vincent while we were playing Charlotte, North Carolina, where he introduced me to this whole universe of underground death metal that I was completely unaware of. That was the poison apple that I bit and it soon infected my entire band.”

IGNORE THE TREND…

“The vibe in the late 90s was that death metal was dead. We didn’t care though, because we were going to do whatever we wanted to do, the world be damned. We were from Greenville, South Carolina, which is a nowhere town. Already we had wrestled with the idea that probably no one was going to give a fuck, so let’s just do what we like and own it. We didn’t care about the ebb and flow of whatever is currently popular.”

DO IT FOR YOURSELF

“That mindset has helped us over the years, remembering who we are and why we’re doing what we’re doing. It’s humbling in a way that we are just some guys from South Carolina who are willing to work hard. We were happy that the timing of the universe then worked in our favour. You can’t complain - you just have to thank the metal gods.”

MAKING THEMED METAL IS A BALANCE, NOT A GIMMICK

“It became obvious to us early on that if you put in too many exotic elements, at some point it’s no longer really a metal record. Different Nile albums have had varying levels of extraneous elements to them. The new one is very streamlined. If you stack it against other Nile records, there are certainly records much thicker with extra shit. It’s always a variable based on what each songs need. It’s the randomness of the universe and this time, we wrote a whole bunch of metal smashers.”

DO YOUR RESEARCH, BUT DON’T BE BEHOLDEN TO IT

“If we were using the music of the local area here, it would sound nothing like a Nile album. In a way it’s a form of escapism. There are a lot of Eastern modalities and tonalities adapted into the guitar playing, but it’s not purely authentic because it can’t be. In the same way that the soundtrack for a Mummy movie or whatever is not all ancient stuff from 5000 years ago, it’s music that puts you in that mindset, which is a different thing. Are you scoring a Hollywood movie, or being a musical preservation society? We’re a metal band, so we lean towards the ‘Hollywood making a horrific Ancient Egypt movie’ [approach]. There was a band from the 70s called Mountain, and one of the great songs was Theme For An Imaginary Western. That showed me you can write music to a movie that doesn’t exist.”

USE MYTHOLOGY AS METAPHOR

“Every song that gets written is filtered through our own lens and our life experiences. The new single To Strike With Sacred Fang, on the one hand we’re talking about ancient assassins, but we’re also talking about in some way a disgust for what we see in the American political system of today where America is in a mess. Black Seeds Of Vengeance is about people doing some despicable stuff where I’m talking about the Amalekites and the terrible things they did, but I’m also talking about my first ex-wife and the seeds of vengeance that she planted. You can’t help it that whatever glasses you’re wearing are going to filter how you look at history.”

YOU’LL SEE ECHOES IN UNLIKELY PLACES

“In the case of our song Chapter For Not Being Hung Upside Down On A Stake In The Underworld And Made To Eat Faeces By The Four Apes, when I came across that [spell] in the Book Of The Dead, I thought, ‘how is this not a metal song?’ Part of the genesis of that was we were on stage and the pit was particularly animated that night, with people going apeshit. We remarked that it was like a gigantic swarm of apes losing their minds like at the zoo running around their cages throwing faeces and [thought back to] that chapter in the Book Of The Dead!”

FIGHT FOR YOUR FRIENDS…

“We don’t get targeted by people who are upset about anti-Christian lyrics or anything like that, but Belphegor were our tourmates on a little Russian tour [in 2016]. We’d toured with them three times before that and when you live with your metal brothers in a tour bus for five-six weeks at a time, there’s a certain amount of bonding.”

…BUT PICK YOUR BATTLES

“We were confronted by religious zealots in the [Saint-Petersburg] airport. It was a stupid situation because the guy was trying to provoke [Belphegor frontman] Helmuth on camera to fight him. We were just trying to get the fuck out of there making our way to the van, and this 300-pound, 6”4 bear of a dude went to take a big swing at Helmuth. I stepped in and shut it down because that was the right thing to do. You can’t let your brothers get fucked up. If I stood there and did nothing and the guy fucking clocked him, nobody would feel good about that. That would have fucked up the tour, and so I stepped in, like anybody would have.”

LEARN WHAT TO LET GO

“I have a black belt in taekwondo and a fourth degree black belt in jiu-jitsu, but I had to put it down and retire. It was killing my wrists and they were always in a brace. I have a career in playing guitar and martial arts was a personal hobby, and one of those things had to go. I am no longer active training every day doing martial arts, but I freaking loved it. Much like playing death metal, it’s a cathartic thing to go and release all your stress. It’s great wholesome fun! It seems not, getting beat up and beating up other people, but it is healthy taking all that aggression and doing something positive with it.”

LEARN TO ENDURE LINE-UP CHANGES

“It has been incredibly taxing. I replaced three bass players last year and two guitarists, so that’s five people I’ve trained to do this job which ain’t an easy job. A little part of me died with each one of those guys, because it’s a months long thing to get somebody ready to play in this band. I need a fucking vacation. We have this album though so sometimes you don’t get to the good stuff unless you pay a whole lot of dues. You’ve gotta persevere until you do what needs to be done.”

DEATH METAL COMES FROM THE HEART

“I need to hear the passion, I need to hear the heart and the soul of whatever music it is. That’s the kind of music that I want to give to people. I don’t want to use the word “spiritual” necessarily, but you’ve got to put conviction into whatever it is you’re doing if you want to reach people, otherwise to me it seems a little flat. You’ve got to give metal heart and soul. With Nile, that comes with the darkness. The underworld does await us all.”

Young death metal act Neckbreakker have announced their debut album.

The rising Danish quintet, formerly called Nakkeknaekker, will release Within The Viscera via Nuclear Blast Records on December 6. The band have also released the record’s second single, Shackled To A Corpse. See album details and hear the new song below.

Neckbreakker comment: “We are thrilled to announce the release of our debut album Within The Viscera. Throughout the creation of the record we were very aware that a band only gets one debut album, so we wanted to make one we could be proud of, and we succeeded.”

They add: “Releasing it through a legendary label like Nuclear Blast Records is a dream come true for us, and we can’t wait for you to experience it.”

Neckbreakker – composed of Christoffer Kofoed (vocals), Joakim Kaspersen and Johan Lundvig (guitars), Sebastian Knoblauch (bass) and Anton “Hajn” Bregendorf (drums) – formed in Silkeborg, Denmark, in 2020, when the members were still teenagers. They released demos in 2020 and 2021 and played Derbyshire metal fest Bloodstock Open Air in 2023, before signing to Nuclear Blast and changing their name.

In an interview with Metal Hammer earlier this year, Crypta singer/bassist Fernanda Lira dubbed Neckbreakker a new band metalheads should watch, calling them “a very good band live”.

The lead single from Within The Viscera, Horizon Of Spikes, dropped last month. The band commented at the time: “We are honoured to announce that we have signed with Nuclear Blast Records, and that our first single Horizon Of Spikes and the accompanying music video is out now. To not only finally share our first single with the world, but to get the opportunity to do it on the world’s finest metal label feels absolutely incredible.”

Neckbreakker are currently touring their native Denmark with melodic death metal band Mercenary. The run of shows finishes tonight (October 9) in Helsingør. They have two album release shows scheduled for December: in Aarhus on December 7 and Copenhagen on December 14.

Neckbreakker – Within The Viscera tracklisting:

01. Horizon Of Spikes
02. Putrefied Body Fluid
03. Shackled To A Corpse
04. Nephilim
05. Purgatory Rites
06. Unholy Inquisition
07. Absorption
08. Silo
09. Face Splitting Madness

Mikael Stanne is a legend of the Gothenburg sound. One-time frontman for In Flames before taking over vocal duties for Dark Tranquillity in 1994, Stanne has remained prolific, guesting with countless bands whilst also unveiling new projects like Swedish death metal luminaries Grand Cadaver and Gothenburg-supergroup The Halo Effect. 

We caught up with Mikael to ask him what bands shaped his journey through death metal - and as you'd expect, things got gruesomly heavy. 

1. Grotesque - The Black Gate Is Closed (1989)

"I first got into extreme metal through trading tapes and reading fanzines. When I was fourteen, I went with one of my neighbours, Shamaatae, to sit in on a rehearsal with his new band. That band was Grotesque and seeing them rehearse was incredibly cool. 

The intensity and speed of the music being played at maximum volume impressed me like very little had up until that point. My favourite song quickly became Blood Runs From The Altar, from their second demo The Black Gate Is Closed. I was already a huge J.R.R. Tolkien fan, so this was just perfection to me."

2. Nihilist - Premature Autopsy (1988)

"I read about the bands from Stockholm all the time in fanzines and as soon as I could save up some money, I would buy demo cassettes from the bands I’d read and heard about. Premature Autopsy blew me away. The HM-2 guitar sound and the rawness of the vocals felt intimidating and insane to me. I’m really glad I got to see them in this constellation in November ’88. "

3. Tiamat - Sumerian Cry (1989)

 "I remember meeting some of the Tiamat guys before they changed their name from Treblinka, and they seemed like fascinating people. I could tell that they had something else in mind with their music, not just the standard fare of heavy distortion and speed. It felt eerie and strange, and they were very different from other bands I listened to at the time. Sumerian Cry is a true classic and as much as I love most of their catalogue, this is what brought me into Johan Edlunds music.

4. Dismember - Like An Everflowing Stream (1991)

"This is just a timeless classic. I had some demos copied from friends prior to Like An Everflowing Stream being released but with such a cover and maybe the coolest production in the history of Stockholm death metal, I bought it on the day of release. I remember we played a festival together in ’92 and I was blown away by their massive sound. None of the other bands stood a chance. Epic!"

5. Merciless – The Awakening (1990)

"This is still my favourite death metal album of all time. The intensity and that whole, 'playing a bit faster than we are able to' type of approach, makes this such a gem. Great riffs, fantastic vocals, killer cover. It had and still has absolutely everything." 

6. At The Gates - Terminal Spirit Disease (1994)

"This is where At the Gates really turned into that inspirational band for me. I loved everything prior to this but it was something about the tight sound that gives this such a propulsive energy. [Fredrik] Nordström’s production here really set the tone for what death metal sounded like, after this. It never gets old and seeing this being played nowadays brings me right back to when I first heard it in the studio, when it was being mixed."

7. The Crown - Deathrace King (2000)

"This just slays so much. It’s impossible to listen to this album without wanting to drink two thousand beers. It’s just so relentless and nasty. I managed to see them many times with different line-ups but I think it really comes together with this one. Total classic."

8. Morbid Angel - Altars Of Madness (1989)

"I first heard Chapel Of Ghouls on the B-side of a cassette with a Metallica live tape on its A-side. Someone had kindly recorded what they considered to be, 'the greatest album of all time,' on the other side and I couldn’t agree more. 

This has everything I love about death metal and David Vincent was a huge influence on me when I started screaming. I saw them in 1990 and it was a transformative experience. Death metal could be more than just brutality and speed, Morbid Angel showed that this genre could expand and grow.

9. Atheist - Piece Of Time (1989)

"The Florida technical death metal scene was huge for me. The mind-bending songs of Atheist were just so out of this world and even if I didn’t understand the songs back then they still resonated with me. I couldn’t love this more if I tried."

10. Sadus - Chemical Exposure (1988)

"The madness of Twisted Face is just insane. I love how over the top it is and how you can see in your mind how these guys play standing on their toes leaning forward. Such a fantastic band that I keep coming back to, time and time again."

Opeth are returning to their death metal roots - vocally, at least - on new album The Last Will And Testament. Naturally, when the band revealed this with lead single §1, fan response was immediate - and incredibly vocal. 

But while there's an undeniable excitement about them returning to death metal for the first time in 16 years, its not like the band have particularly run from their past - their earlier, heavier songs still feature prominently in sets, after all. Even so, when Hammer caught up with frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt and guitarist Fredrik Åkesson, we got them to share a little bit about how they got into the genre in the first place - and name the greatest death metal band of all time. 

How did you both get into death metal?

Mikael: “I was pretty late with death metal. I wanted to graduate from thrash and speed metal, really – it’s almost an evolution, getting heavier and heavier. I heard Sepultura’s Schizophrenia and Morbid Visions, but… as much as I love those records, it’s a bit too sloppy! 

"Ironically, it was probably Bathroy’s second album [The Return...] that really helped me get into it. I didn’t get it when it first came out, it must’ve been like '87 or something [when I picked it up]. It scared the shit out of me! I thought it was really scary, evil record and there was this spooky song on there called Possessed where he’s screaming, ‘I’m possessed’ and I thought that was… ‘Oh my god!’

There’s also Swedish death metal band called Mefisto who were associated with Bathory in those days. One of [Fredrik’s] friends actually played guitar on that, a guy called Omar Ahmed who was brilliant. I heard their demo The Puzzle a few years after it came out [in ‘86] and thought it was amazing – incredible musicianship, sounded really evil and just great songs.

Fredrik: “I also started listening to death metal pretty late – I was way more into the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal and bands like Ozzy Osbourne, Dio – all of that. I went more extreme when a buddy of mine picked up the first Metallica album. We were like ‘what the hell is this?!’ and started checking out heavier and heavier records. 

We met a guy who lived up the street who was super into Venom and even had inverted crucifixes in his flowerbeds! The first album I brought though was Death’s Individual Thought Patterns. I got that because King Diamond's Andy LaRocque played guitar on it and I’m a total guitar nerd." 

How did you get involved in the scene?

Mikael: "I went to see the band Merciless, just before they put out their second record [Realm of the Dark]. They were playing a youth club with this band called Beyond, but that’s the first thing that comes to mind. I must’ve seen Entombed for the first time around then too. I was blown away by the camaraderie between fans and bands – there were hardly any people there, but everyone was so devoted to the music.”

Fredrik: "Like Mikael, I went to shows. Christofer Johnsson of Therion played our local youth club with his band – then called Blitzkrieg. This must have been like 86, 87. That was probably the first death metal show I went to."

So who would you say is the greatest death metal band of all time?

Mikael: "Ultimately, the best death metal band of all time is Morbid Angel. Alters Of Madness had everything I wanted from that music – the musicianship, but also an intensity that I was after… plus the best death metal vocals I’d ever heard. David Vincent is better than Chuck [Schuldiner, Death founder] and Chuck is fucking awesome! David Vincent is the king of death metal and I shape my own vocals after him.

Fredrik: I’ve gotta agree with Mikael though, Morbid Angel were the greatest. I also loved Domination though and Where The Slime Lives.”

 Mikael: “We toured with Morbid Angel on Domination. We thought we were going to blow them off-stage with our folky, rock, metal Morningrise album. Needless to say, it didn’t happen.”

Fredrik: “We mustn’t forget Entombed too, though.” 

Mikael: “Yeah, absolutely. I guess we should also mention that Bathory are black metal too and not strictly death metal. If that’s the case then we should also talk about Celtic Frost and Hellhammer. I remember getting Hellhammer’s Apocalyptic Raid EP; I remember walking into a department store in Stockholm and seeing that record, knowing I immediately had to have it. It was too expensive and I didn’t have the money – it was like £7 or something, so I changed the price tag to £1!”

The Last Will And Testament is out October 11 via Reigning Phoenix Music. 

Floridian death metal pioneers Deicide have released an official ouija board. The Scars of the Crucifix board – named after the band's 2004 album of the same name – is available to purchase now from Earache Records, and was produced in collaboration with frontman Glen Benton, a man who, lest we forget, once burned an inverted cross into his own forehead. So he's well qualified for this sort of thing. 

According to Earache, the "Deicide-inspired spirit board is here to help you bridge the gap between the living and the dead," which all sounds rather lovely, but be warned: possible dangers include "speaking in tongues, sudden urges to headbang, and an inexplicable desire to learn death metal growls."

The solid wood board features Deicide's decidedly blasphemous imagery and includes a planchette (that's the little thing you move around the board when receiving messages from "the other side") adorned with the Rune-style symbol that most recently appeared on the cover of the 2022 compilation Deicide – Crucifixation: The Early Years.

The news arrives as Deicide embark on their Banished By Sin tour in the company of Krisiun, Inferi and Cloak. The first show is tomorrow night (September 5) at The Masquerade (Hell) in Atlanta, GA, and the trek climaxes on October 11 with a hometown show at the Orpheum in Tampa, FL. Full dates below.  

Decide Banished By Sin 2024 tour dates

Sep 05: Atlanta The Masquerade (Hell), GA
Sep 06: Cave-In-Rock Hogrock Campgrounds (FTA), IL
Sep 07: Cleveland Grog Shop, OH
Sep 08: Baltimore Baltimore Soundstage, MD
Sep 09: Mechanicsburg Lovedraft's Brewing Co, PA
Sep 10: Brooklyn Monarch, NY
Sep 11: Waterbury Elite 23, CT
Sep 13: Quebec City Salle Montaigne, QC
Sep 14: Montreal Le Studio TD, QC
Sep 15: Toronto Lee's Palace, ON
Sep 16: Detroit The Sanctuary, MI
Sep 17: Chicago House of Blues, IL
Sep 18: Minneapolis Skyway Theater: Studio B, MN
Sep 19: Winnipeg Park Theatre, MB
Sep 20: Regina The Exchange, SK
Sep 21: Edmonton The Starlite Room, AB
Sep 23: Vancouver Rickshaw Theatre, BC
Sep 24: Seattle El Corazon, WA
Sep 25: Portland Bossanova Ballroom, OR
Sep 26: San Francisco DNA Lounge, CA
Sep 27: Fresno Fulton 55, CA
Sep 28: Los Angeles 1720, CA
Sep 29: San Diego Brick by Brick, CA
Sep 30: Las Vegas Backstage Bar, NV
Oct 01: Mesa The Nile Theater, AZ
Oct 02: El Paso Rockhouse Bar & Grill, TX
Oct 03: Denver Marquis, CO
Oct 04: Albuquerque Sunshine Theater, NM
Oct 05: Dallas Trees, TX
Oct 06: Austin Come And Take It Live, TX
Oct 07: Corpus Christi House of Rock, TX
Oct 08: Houston Scout Bar, TX
Oct 09: New Orleans Southport Music Hall, LA
Oct 11: Tampa The Orpheum, FL

Get tickets.

“We’ve never received this level of press coverage before,” an audibly excited Francesco Paoli says after joining a Zoom call with Metal Hammer, in the middle of a stacked day of interviews. “I’ve spoken to ’zines, blogs, vlogs, Instagrammers, Youtubers… They’re looking to spread the word as much as possible, and it’s so amazing!”

It’s easy to see where the boosted interest in talking to the Fleshgod Apocalypse leader has come from. Three years ago, the singer/bassist, who founded his band in 2007, slipped while mountain-climbing near his home in Spoleto, Italy. The accident gave him a host of potentially life-changing injuries, including dozens of fractured or broken bones, internal bleeding, and nerve damage in his left arm. At one point, doctors considered amputating that arm just below the shoulder.

Francesco was able to make a near-total recovery, but he still sports some wounds from his ordeal. He has a prosthetic elbow. He shows Hammer a scar that runs up the length of his arm, caused by the nerve transfer surgery he underwent to restore feeling in his hand. He reveals another from the fall itself in his skull, usually hidden by his thick black hair.

The musician bears the psychological impact of the accident on Fleshgod Apocalypse’s new, sixth album, Opera. Though still heavy as sin, the record pulls the band back from their usually frantic symphonic death metal ways to tell a more nuanced, emotional story about Francesco’s fall and recuperation. Below, the frontman talks all about the new music, as well as the near-death journey he endured to be able to make it.

What happened when you fell in 2021?

“I was rock climbing on a very old, very nice route, not far from here. My friends invited me to go and, while we were climbing, one bolt [connecting Francesco’s ropes to the mountain] broke and I fell. Since this route wasn’t super tough, there wasn’t much protection. The last bolt was a few metres below me. The first part of the fall was about five metres, and I just destroyed myself, and then the rest was luckily into the void. If it was all rocks, I would have been dead. I dangled from a nose-like shape in the rock for an hour and a half until the helicopter came and rescued me.”

Were you conscious while you were dangling?

“I wasn’t conscious for something like 15 or 20 minutes, then I woke up.”

What’s your reaction when you wake up to find yourself dangling off a cliff?

“I was crying, totally in chaos. I figured out that my left arm was broken so I took that arm and then put it like a scarf around my neck. My right leg and foot were fucked up as well, so I tried to figure out how to stabilise myself in a way where I couldn’t feel that pain. Adrenaline was just, like, blasting me. I figured out that my harness was slipping away, because I was upside-down at that moment. I used some carabiners to make a ‘saver harness’ that let me stay without slipping, even if I fainted again.

“I realised that I was losing blood, but not how much, because my clothes were waterproof and therefore blood-proof. I was mostly losing blood from my heart. But, I could move my legs, so I thought, ‘OK, maybe it’s not that bad.’ I realised how bad it was at the hospital. They X-rayed me and I had something like 25 fractures, and my arm and elbow exploded completely. They had to replace it with a prosthetic.”

The song Bloodclock describes visions of your son digging your grave, which you had while dangling there. Is that literal?

“Yeah, man. Sometimes you lose memories of things, even looking back on my career, but for that accident, reliving it is like watching a fucking movie. I had all these visions, everything flashing before my eyes: my mother, my wife, my son. I remember them all and could tell you the order. I remember perfectly up to when I got to the hospital, when I entered this delirium from the morphine, pain and lack of sleep.”

Did you ever think you were going to die?

“Twice. The first time, physically, when I went to hospital and the doctor realised how bad it was. I’d lost a shitload of blood. I’ve been told that I was very close to dying because of loss of blood.

“The second time I nearly died was mentally, when they said they couldn’t do any proper surgeries for my injuries, especially my arm. They wanted to just cut it off at first. But, then they found an incredible surgeon in Bologna that could handle it and I was transferred. They rebuilt my elbow in 12 hours and they did great! I lost the use of one nerve, and you have three nerves in your arm, so I lost sensitivity in about half my arm and about 70 percent of my movement in my left hand.”

And you still played bass on the new album?!

“I also played some guitar. I figured out a different tuning, basically a drop tuning, that still let me do it. But most of the songwriting I actually did without an instrument. I just started singing it.”

When did you start writing Opera?

“We started immediately after I was discharged. I came home and – with our piano player [Francesco Ferrini], who’s been my songwriting partner since the early days – took some stuff from my studio to my bedroom upstairs. We made a temporary studio in my bedroom. It was a mess, because I was bedridden at first, then in a wheelchair, but we didn’t want to lose the mood and the atmosphere. In a way we felt like shit, but in a way we felt relieved, because we knew this stuff would be tremendously heavy for people.”

There’s a song called Matricide 8.21, where you apologise to your mum…

“You know what, everybody talks about that song. It’s a special song, but it’s about the sense of guilt. When you fuck up so much that you almost lose your life, you basically kill your mother as well as yourself. I’m a father and I cannot imagine if something happened to my son. I’d die with him. So, when I saw my mother coming to the hospital crying like crazy, I felt like shit. I killed her.

“I wanted to write her a song that was both an apology and a song of rationality. I wanted to apologise for my mistakes, but it was an unfortunate thing that happened. I wanted to explain that I did everything right [leading up to the accident] and I should be able to forgive myself for what I’ve done.”

Did you need to convince yourself to make music again after the accident?

“The biggest battle was mental, not physical. You cannot heal without willpower and willpower comes from your own mind. Writing about my accident was part of the healing process. Sharing my weaknesses and fragilities helped me start this process of acceptance. Sharing these things helped me, in a way, get the right support and led me to full recovery.”

Opera is the story of the last three years, so does the last song, Till Death Do Us Part, bring us to where you are now?

“It’s a description of my days in hospital. Veronica [Bordacchini, soprano singer] embodies hope. It’s a dialogue with hope. In the end, the whole meaning of the album is not losing hope, because things are fixable. Everything is fixable. That’s what I learned in hospital, especially towards the end, when I was going in and out of the neurologist’s. I was the only one walking in and out of there but everybody else was happier than me. Somebody told me, ‘The only thing that matters is the way you react to what happens in your life.’

“I learned how stupid I was. I’ve never been a selfish guy, but you can always improve. The accident made me a better man, a better husband, a better human being, and now I understand how small my problems are compared to the rest of the world’s.”

Opera is out now via Nuclear Blast Records. Fleshgod Apocalypse will co-headline a North American tour with Shadow Of Intent in the autumn.

A contestant on The Voice Australia has performed Britney Spears anthem Toxic with growls.

17-year-old Mol Turner – from Wollongong, New South Wales – became the first extreme metal vocalist to perform on the Aussie version of the show with her appearance last night (August 26). Watch the beefed-up Spears cover via the video player below.

Turner’s rendition appeared to stun The Voice’s Australian judges. Her transition from singing to screaming got the four of them, who had their chairs turned away as part of the series’ “blind auditions”, to headbang and jump up in surprise. Ultimately, though, the only judge to turn their chair and vote to push Turner through to the next round was singer/songwriter Kate Miller-Heidke.

Following her performance airing, Turner published footage of it to Instagram. “made fucking history last night as the first ever extreme metal vocalist on @thevoiceau !!” she commented.

The singer, who also drums in Wollongong band Clueless, went on to say that she auditioned for The Voice “as a joke”. “as someone who started screaming alone in my garage after listening to [Suicide Silence’s] The Cleansing & [Slipknot’s] Iowa a few too many times, I can’t believe it has landed me where it has.

“Metal & HXC have defined who I am & in a lot of ways saved my life throughout the past 7 years. This music means absolutely everything to me, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Turner later signed off: “I cannot express enough how grateful I am for everyone who tuned in and showed their support, it means so fucking much to me.

“THANKYOU, THANKYOU, THANKYOU !!”

The OG Britney Spears recently made metal headlines as she became embroiled in a short-lived feud with Ozzy Osbourne and his family. The spat stemmed from when the Osbournes critiqued Spears’ dancing and social media presence on their podcast.

The singer clapped back: “I’m gonna … tell the Osbourne family who is the most boring family known to mankind to kindly fuck off!”

The Osbournes apologised for their comments on the following episode of their podcast.

Opeth singer/guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt has explained why the band returned to making progressive death metal.

The Swedish prog metal sextet’s new single, §1 (pronounced “paragraph one”), contains the first growled vocals they’ve used since 2008 album Watershed.

In an exclusive interview with Metal Hammer, Åkerfeldt has revealed why the band have re-embraced their extreme metal roots.

He explains that the dark concept of new album The Last Will & Testament, which is about a family feuding in the aftermath of its patriarch’s death, influenced the decision.

Other members of the band and recent tours also made an impact.

When asked by journalist Rich Hobson what “brought the band back” to death metal, Åkerfeldt answers, “Honestly? The material itself did, in a way.

“With this record in particular, we knew it would work well as part of the big concept idea, illustrating particular things and giving this character a voice.”

Åkerfeldt then names longtime bassist Martín Méndez and new drummer Waltteri Väyrynen as champions of the new direction.

“Méndez is my horse whisperer – maybe hoarse whisperer! – in a way. He’d be like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we did something really heavy on the next album?’, and I’m like, ‘Hm…’

“Waltteri coming into the band was another factor,” the singer/guitarist continues.

“He’s much younger than us and he’s got the capacity to really play that stuff.

“He really loves it, constantly talking about death metal and stuff.

“Part of me wanted him as our new drummer to be playing on that kind of record, too. So that was in the back of my mind.”

Lastly, Åkerfeldt attributes the change to the band’s recent 30th-anniversary tour, where they played one song from each of their studio albums, voted on by the fans.

“Going back to some of that really early stuff, I was like, ‘My voice sounds good!’ So I wanted to go give it a go.”

Åkerfeldt admits that there were growing pains with reintegrating death metal, but that the heaviness was ultimately satisfying and fit the themes of The Last Will & Testament.

“It was a bit of a stretch in the beginning, to be honest!” he says.

“At first I wasn’t sure it was really worth it, like I was maybe faking it, in a way. I wrote half a song, thought, ‘This isn’t working,’ worked on something I felt did work and that ended up also being a heavy song.

“Then, when I went back to what I’d first started with, it was like, ‘Oh, I love this!’”

Opeth will headline Bloodstock Open Air festival in Derbyshire next Friday (August 9), playing a fan-voted setlist.

The band will release The Last Will & Testament via Moderbolaget and Reigning Phoenix Music on October 11.

They’ll then tour North America in October and play across Europe in February 2025. See the full list of dates and get tickets via the Opeth website.

 If you’ve spent much time on the internet looking at pictures of badass motherfuckers, an activity we surely all do, you’ve probably come across snaps of “The Heavy Metal Cowboys of Botswana” looking like the kings of that particular category. Highlighted in the 2018 documentary Freedom in the Dark, Botswana is home to a tight metal scene that nonetheless forms one of the most dedicated and prominent on the African continent. Right at the fore of that are Overthrust, local legends active since 2008 and one of their few bands to tour in Europe.

Infected by Myth is only their second full-length, and at 23 minutes it’s still a very in-and-out affair. That title though is married to a cover with a robed priest channeling that infection straight into the heads of a zombielike congregation, vultures lurking nearby; in a country with a nearly 80% Christian population, you can see the genuine social rebellion of metal in full force here.

Inspiration comes from the death metal of the UK & Americas, the steady rolling rhythms of Bolt Thrower meeting the more guttural brutal death of the US. Overthrust have evident limitations. As the distorted bass and drums clatter over each other in Fallen Witches, the arrangements are rudimentary, the band repeatedly pulling to a stop to switch tempos. With that rickety, strung-together feel reminiscent of Bestial Devastation-era Sepultura though, it is also free of the cut-and-paste studio sensibility prevalent in much contemporary metal, and you at least here can imagine this is what Overthrust sound like playing live.

That feel benefits Slaves Of Myth, its riffs slimy limbs crawling from some gurgling tar pit. They even then knock out a comparatively jaunty eponymous anthem in Overthrust Deathmental. In an era when slamming bands like 200 Stab Wounds and Sanguisugabogg are more popular than ever, these tunes from the other side of the world can evoke those same sensations.

Glen Benton is the face of Satanic death metal. Literally… having branded an inverted cross on his forehead in his early days of fronting Tampa’s Deicide. Across his 35-year crusade, Glen has riled up countless Christians, but also animal rights activists – after he shot a squirrel during an interview with the NME in 1992, he received death threats, and a show in Stockholm was bombed. 

A few years later, Republican senator Bob Dole condemned the Florida death metal scene for threatening to “undermine our character as a nation”. Glen’s also a 56-year-old father of two, and speaks of the myriad scrapes he’s ended up in with the flippancy of a man who has learned not to take things too seriously. 

BE WHO YOU’RE BORN TO BE 

“I was always referred to as ‘the evil little bastard’ in my family. I just fell into it, and it’s the persona I’ve had ever since I was a little kid, through school and through everything else. I don’t even really know why, but do I get off on raising eyebrows and ruffling feathers? Fuck yeah, I do! Fifty-six years old and I still love getting a reaction out of folks. Most kids rebel, and I wanted to fight the powers.” 

YOU DON’T NEED DOGMA TO BE A GOOD PERSON 

“Religion is a three-legged dog, and it’s on its way out. I think people know how to treat each other, and don’t need a book full of bullshit to tell them how to do it. I think we’re all learning as a species to not step on each other’s toes and who are the toe-steppers. We all know who the players in the game are.” 

USE WHAT YOU KNOW 

“When I was eight years old and forced against my will to participate in the Christmas play at the church my mother was a Sunday school teacher at, I was singing at the front of the church thinking, ‘How did I get myself into this shit?’ My father’s side of the family were Catholic and my mother’s Lutheran, so I got the worst of both worlds. It’s beaten into me, so I can’t sing about anything else. If I try to sing about other things, I draw a complete blank. I let the universe speak through me, and if I have to force it, it just won’t come.” 

THE 80S FLORIDA METAL SCENE WAS AN ARMS RACE 

“Back then, we were all trying to define our own sounds and images. I don’t wanna say there was unfriendly competition, but I don’t wanna say there was friendly competition either. We were all competing for the front seat. It all started with Savatage and Nasty Savage. You had the California thrash thing going on with Possessed and we wanted to outdo that. My goal was to be heavier, vocally especially.” 

KNOW WHEN TO QUIT 

“I didn’t think playing shows with rotting meat as part of our set-up was gonna cause that much of a shitstorm. Within three shows of that stuff I had the authorities bearing down on me, so it was a very short-lived moment in Deicide history.”

IMPULSES CAN BE HONEST 

“I think I was only 22 when I burned the inverted cross into my forehead. The spirit moved me, man! To this day, I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking, but I knew that I had been christened Catholic as a child, and I felt that the best way to take care of that would be my symbolic way of taking that Catholic mark off of my skin. I’ve always been that kid in the picture who’s got that twisted look and the smile on his face, and when I got to an age where I could start being me, I just started being me. Now that my two sons are both grown and off in the world, I find myself back to being that guy again, the guy that branded the cross on his forehead.” 

BALANCING MUSIC WITH FATHERHOOD IS TOUGH 

“I don’t think people realise, because I don’t speak too much about my personal life, but all the things in the past where we have had to cancel tours and people have pointed their fingers, these were all done in the name of my kids. When I had to get custody of my youngest son he was stolen from me and taken out of state, and I had to go get him and bring him home. I was a single guy raising him by myself and a lot of people don’t understand this shit, on top of being who I am and doing what I do.”

KEEP IT SIMPLE 

“I learned that the most simplistic ideas are some of the greatest, and that simplicity is the key to rock’n’roll. People want to be entertained, and I want to write music that people can kick the shit out of each other to, not where you have to sit there and figure it all out. We’re not Pink Floyd, for god’s sake.” 

PREPARE TO BE SENSATIONALISED 

“Senator Bob Dole made mention of us, and I came home from the supermarket and there was a news truck sitting on my front yard. They wanted my reaction to Bob Dole’s reaction to somebody else’s fucking reaction, and I told them to get the fuck off my property.” 

NOT ALL PRESS IS GOOD PRESS 

“[A bomb went off at our show in Stockholm in 1992], but I’ve blown up bigger shit in my backyard, and there was overreaction from the authorities and the press that meant I didn’t get to do my gig. The fans got the end of the poop stick on that one.” 

FIND YOUR FAMILY, AND YOUR SENSE OF HUMOUR

“[Drummer] Steve Asheim has been in this band with me for nearly 40 years, and we have smoked a lot of weed together, that’s for sure. I was going through my pictures the other day and I found this one of Steve maybe a year after we met, when he was 16 years old and I was 18. We know how to make each other laugh, we yell at the television together when we’re on tour.

We’re a couple of old angry yard gnomes. Steve was always the mediator back in the day, and I felt bad for him because he was always put in the middle of the horseshit that we had to put up with back then. Now he doesn’t have to, because we’ve made this a very harmonious thing where there’s not a negative word or anyone feeling hurt. If you can’t laugh at this shit, you will throw yourself off a building.”

I WON’T BACK DOWN ON RELIGION JUST TO APPEASE PEOPLE

“I think what’s important is just being true to one’s self and finishing what you started. I’m not gonna bail out of who and what I am just to placate people who can’t enjoy it for what it is. I’m not singing about what you should believe in, it’s about me. It’s not your agony, it’s not your pain, and I can’t defend my sickness. Enjoy it if you want to. The great thing about this world is we can change the channel. I don’t like to watch the news because I feel like I’m being stabbed to the death, so I don’t watch the news! It’s fucking simple. If you don’t like Deicide, do me a favour: turn it off.” 

THE HEAT WILL MOVE OFF YOU 

“I thought there was a real parenting problem going on in Norway [when the church burnings and murders happened in the black metal scene], but in the United States those guys didn’t equal an empty pickle jar. As far as the religious right here in the States goes, Marilyn Manson took those off my back.” 

METAL NEEDS ITS CHARACTERS 

“I was a huge Ronnie James Dio fan, as well as an Ozzy one. The business right now really needs people with personalities. All the greats are dying off and we need more people who can go out there and shake people up. There was a moment when there was too much music to be consumed, and there’s so much out there that really you can’t separate anything. That’s why I’m saying you need those guys, your Ozzys and Rob Halfords and Lemmys who are not afraid to be out there.” 

GIVING A SHIT IS OVERRATED 

“When you get to my age, you really get this really strong, profound ‘I don’t give a fuck about anything’ energy. I don’t chase other people’s happiness. I’ve already raised two kids who are off in the world, so now the fucking ATM is closed, and I’m back to being ruthless Glen again. My parents are dead, everybody in my family is dead, the moral police don’t give a fuck about me anymore, so I have no one to answer to. I am an evil empty nester.”

Banished By Sin is out now via Reigning Phoenix. Deicide play Bloodstock in August. 

Gojira drummer Mario Duplantier will join the house band on Late Night With Seth Meyers next week.

The 42-year-old, who co-founded the French death metal titans with his singer/guitarist brother Joe in 1996, will play with The 8G Band on the NBC show from June 17 to 20.

Gojira announced the guest spot via X (formerly Twitter) last week.

“Mario will soon be sitting in on drums with The 8G Band on NBC’s Late Night w/ Seth Meyers!” they wrote.

“Make sure to watch him shred during the week of 6/17-6/20.”

The appearance will put Duplantier in an exclusive club of metal drummers who’ve performed on the programme.

Nicko McBrain of Iron Maiden played with The 8G Band in March 2017, as did Danny Carey of prog metal royalty Tool in January last year.

Craig Reynolds, drummer of rap metal outfit Stray From The Path and host of podcast The Downbeat, went viral with his appearance on Late Night in 2022.

The drummer had a dialogue with guest comedian and fellow Brit John Oliver during his stay, which was filmed shortly after the passing of Queen Elizabeth II.

When Meyers asked Oliver how he was responding to the news, the comedian deflected the question to Reynolds, who answered: “You know what, I didn’t know her.”

The drummer posted on X: “make @iamjohnoliver laugh ✅

“I’m on @LateNightSeth all this week 🖤”

Gojira will tour North America from September this year as the support act for Korn, joining Canadian prog metal stars Spiritbox.

See the full list of dates and get tickets below.

Gojira 2024 tour dates (with Korn and Spiritbox):

Sep 12: Tampa MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre, FL
Sep 14: West Palm Beach iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre, FL
Sep 16: Alpharetta Ameris Bank Amphitheatre, GA
Sep 18: Charlotte PNC Music Pavilion, NC
Sep 20: Camden Freedom Mortgage Pavilion, NJ
Sep 21: Mansfield Xfinity Center, MA
Sep 23: Newark Prudential Center, NJ
Sep 25: Toronto Budweiser Stage, ON
Sep 27: Detroit Pine Knob Music Theatre, MI
Sep 28: Chicago Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre, IL
Oct 02: Albuquerque Isleta Amphitheater, NM
Oct 03: Phoenix Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre, AZ
Oct 06: Mountain View Shoreline Amphitheatre, CA
Oct 08: Portland Moda Center, OR
Oct 10: Tacoma Dome, WA
Oct 12: Nampa Ford Idaho Center Amphitheatre, ID
Oct 13: Salt Lake City Delta Center, UT 
Oct 16: Denver Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre, CO
Oct 18: Kansas City T-Mobile Center, MO
Oct 20: Houston The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, TX
Oct 21: San Antonio Frost Bank Center, TX
Oct 23: Tulsa BOK Center, OK
Oct 25: Omaha CHI Health Center, NE
Oct 27: St Paul Xcel Energy Center, MN

Get tickets.

How to watch in the US

Duplantier will play on Late Night With Seth Meyers from June 17 to 20 with the The 8G Band. You'll be able to watch via NBC and through the Peacock network.

If you’re outside the US on holiday and don’t want to miss Mario do his thing on the show, you’ll can watch through a VPN. Virtual Private Networks are used to change the location of your IP address, enabling you to watch the three-part docu-series outside of the US. NordVPN is our service of choice and it's available with a 30-day trial.

You'll then be able to log into your Peacock account and watch live.

The promise of Converge frontman Jacob Bannon being joined by The Red Chord bassist Greg Weeks and guitarist Mike McKenzie, Uncle Acid/former Job for A Cowboy drummer Jon Rice, and Twitching Tongues guitarist Sean Martin, and attempting to make classic-sounding death metal, was enough to make the ears of anyone with a penchant for brutal music prick up. Therefore, when Umbra Vitae’s debut album, Shadow Of Life, arrived in 2020, it was an immediate must-hear. Looking back, however, it didn’t quite live up to the hype. It was decent, extremely good in parts, but clearly the sound of a collective still finding their feet.

Those feet have absolutely been firmly planted now, because Light Of Death is a superior album to that debut in every single metric you could judge it by. Twice as long, and with five more tracks than its predecessor, it’s an record that uses that extra runtime to explore the dynamics of the genre far more Umbra Vitae did previously. The gooey, half-time thump, gurgling gang chants and shredding solos of Anti-Spirit Machine sit next to the thrashing, utterly destructive grind of Reality In Retrograde. There’s even some acoustic flamenco guitar on the album’s longest song, the fantastically chaotic Cause & Effect.

As ever, Kurt Ballou deserves a nod for his superb production. Jacob Bannon screams and snarls as though his head is about to explode like that bloke from the Scanners movie, but the real stars of the show are Sean Martin and Mike McKenzie. They run through a riff repertoire worthy of death metal’s finest, aping Trey Azagthoth one minute, James Murphy the next, and throwing in some of their own hardcore influences while they’re at it. A significant step up, and, in a hotly contested race, quite possibly one of 2024’s finest death metal albums.

Light Of Death is out June 7 via Deathwish

Swedish death metal up-and-comers Orbit Culture have released a live version of their 2023 single While We Serve, filmed during their recent headline tour of the UK and Europe.

The four-piece – who’ve previously supported Trivium, Bleed From Within, In Flames, At The Gates and more – played their first-ever headline tour across the continent in March.

The run included a date at the Underworld in London, which Metal Hammer attended and awarded a four-star review.

“A closing sprint through From The Inside, Saw, While We Serve and Vultures Of North unsurprisingly maintains the frenzy to the show’s very end,” journalist Matt Mills wrote.

“If anything, a wall of death in a club that has a fucking pillar in the centre of it marks the height of the madness. It’s a sight which only reaffirms that, from tonight selling out to the ravenous crowd and the impressive visuals, Orbit Culture will quickly outgrow this kind of venue.

“Given how much momentum has already amassed behind this band, it feels like, in just a few years’ time, this will be one of those concerts that people fiercely envy you for attending.”

Orbit Culture will spend much of this year supporting Slipknot across North America as part of the nu metal titans’ 25th-anniversary celebrations.

The band have also announced a handful of headline dates between the Slipknot shows.

Orbit Culture will then see in 2025 by supporting Trivium and Bullet For My Valentine on the European leg of the metalcore heroes’ Poisoned Ascendancy world tour, where the co-headliners will play their respective 2005 breakthrough albums Ascendancy and The Poison in full.

See the full list of Orbit Culture’s live commitments and get tickets via the band’s website.

Orbit Culture released their latest album, Descent, in August 2023 and followed it that December with the b-side compilation EP The Forgotten.

Widely earmarked for greatness after the release of their Sonoran Deprivation debut in 2016, Arizona residents Gatecreeper have spent their first decade establishing themselves as the modern era’s most potent purveyors of Stockholm-meets-the-desert death metal. They may have taken their sweet time to produce a full-length follow-up to 2019’s rapturously received Deserted (the brutal snapshots of 2021’s An Unexpected Reality EP notwithstanding), but Dark Superstition is every inch the strident, big label debut. Produced by Converge’s Kurt Ballou, this is a more diverse and daring record than Gatecreeper’s old school reputation might suggest. The mid-paced pummelling of The Black Curtain is gritty and melancholic like old school Paradise Lost; Superstitious Visions is doomy rock ‘n’ roll with a brittle, hardcore heart; Caught In The Treads’ thunderous, folk-tinged call-to-arms is crushing and uplifting in equal measure. 

There will doubtless be some Gatecreeper fans that object to some of the more overtly melodic moments on Dark Superstition. Those people are being a bit silly. Full of big songs with classy, melodeath hooks and sturdy, mid-paced grooves, the Arizonans’ third full-length is their most accessible by far, but this not-that-huge stylistic shift never feels like a compromise. The opening Dead Star may be slow and touched by the hand of goth, but it packs a jarring, razor-edged punch; Masterpiece Of Chaos is as gnarly and belligerent as anything from those revered, early Entombed albums. But in its entirety, Dark Superstition is simply the moment where Gatecreeper become a more well-rounded and versatile heavy metal band. 

The closing Tears Fall From The Sky sums it all up: a merciless, slow-stomping doom colossus, it is brutally, unnervingly heavy and yet vibrant with classic metal melodies and a real atmosphere of menacing portentousness. That kind of flesh-flaying finesse cannot be faked. Gatecreeper have perfected the old school revivalism thing and moved on to something more measured and approachable, but without losing a shred of their original deathly intent. Dark Superstition should be regarded as a great leap forward for a great band, but one that will still slit you open for fun. Next level of death, effortlessly achieved.

Dark Superstition is out Friday May 17

It’s not every day you see a death metal bassist slide past you on ice skates, holding onto a three-foot-tall plastic penguin for dear life – but Frozen Soul are a band obsessed with ice. 

Since they formed six years ago, the five-piece from Dallas, Fort Worth have released two albums: Crypt Of Ice (2021) and Glacial Domination (2023). Their artwork depicts dead bodies and/or blood frozen amid wintry tundras, and they even wield a smoke machine at their shows to spray their audiences with ‘snow’. 

However, as Hammer are finding out today, this lot are also fucking terrified of ice. Given Frozen Soul’s frosty imagery, we thought it’d be fun to take them skating at Ice Rink Canary Wharf in London, ahead of the gig they’re playing at the Underworld tonight as part of their European tour. 

However, of the four of them (guitarist Michael Munday isn’t here today – he’s skipping the dates due to a house move), it’s only bass player Samantha Mobley who straps on her skates. “We’ve got three more weeks of touring,” vocalist Chad Green reasons, watching from the barrier. He, guitarist Chris Bonner and drummer Matt Dennard haven’t skated since childhood, and the last thing they want are back injuries, especially given they already spend a lot of time squashed into tour bus bunks. 

It turns out we were overly optimistic about our own skating abilities and should have sat this one out, too. By the time Hammer actually gets two skates onto the ice, we’re waddling off again so the band can do a photoshoot. 

Chad, Chris and Matt sensibly wear crampons on their shoes, to minimise the risk of going arse over tit. Why didn’t we think of that? Even with other skaters flying past, paying no notice – spinning, gliding backwards and even jumping – we tell ourselves it’s OK, as we haven’t skated in 17 years. It’s a moment of self-assurance that gets flung out the window the second Samantha swings by and tells us that she hasn’t done this in 27 years. 

Even clinging to the penguin-shaped skating aid as she moves around the rink, she’s putting the rest of us to shame. After the photoshoot, everybody’s hurried off the rink, a Zamboni primed to resurface the ice and ready it for the next, far more talented, batch of skaters. As the five of us cram into a black cab bound for the Underworld, we feel the need to ask: why the hell are they so fixated on ice?

Although they skated intermittently as kids, it’s clearly not a pastime that’s endured into adult life. Plus, let’s be honest, their home state of Texas isn’t exactly known for being a winter wonderland. “Honestly, the ice thing came as a way to lean into the name of the band,” Chad shrugs, once we’re settled on Frozen Soul’s tour bus in Camden. “When we finally figured the name out, we asked, ‘How do you keep going with it?’ I’ve always been a fan of bands like Kiss and Slipknot, because I appreciate the show.” 

Frozen Soul’s name appears as a lyric in Metallica’s Ride The Lightning track, Trapped Under Ice (‘Frozen soul, frozen down to the core!’), but Chad also traces the moniker back to a time he, Samantha and Michael were listening to obscure extreme metal demos on YouTube together. One of them, by Swedish thrash band Mezzrow, was titled Frozen Soul. 

Chad’s relationship with rock’n’roll dates back many years. Before he was born and during his early childhood, his grandparents ran Fort Worth rock bar Savvy’s, which was frequented by the likes of Pantera. “I’ve been told I tried to play Vinnie Paul’s drum set and got yelled at when I was super-, super-tiny,” the vocalist remembers. 

It was there that his parents met, his mum working as a waitress and his dad doing security. Although Chad grew up in a supportive household with his mum, grandparents and two younger brothers (Josh and Cory), he acknowledges parts of it were difficult. His dad, he says, was a heroin addict who’s spent 30 years in prison. 

“He’s out of prison now, but he’s not in my life,” Chad explains. “He was the guy that would get us Christmas presents and then would sneak in and steal them back to pawn them afterwards. I ignore his calls every other day.” 

Later, Chad’s mum passed away after developing diabetes from medication she was taking, and, during the writing of Glacial Domination, Cory died of a drug overdose. The vocalist explains that hardships like these, endured by both him and those close to him, have also shaped Frozen Soul’s iconography. 

“Life is cold, man,” he says. “Sometimes you gotta be cold too. But sometimes it’s about being warm, to people who need it, to friends and family. Our music is about all of that stuff. It’s easier to go in and out of it in a funny sense than in a serious sense.”

Chad has always found solace in escapism, fantasy and the theatrical. Not only does he adore the larger-than-life performances of Kiss and Slipknot, as a kid, he was a big gamer and played with Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. Then, as a grown-up, he got into fantasy card game Magic: The Gathering. The singer and Michael, his future guitarist, bonded over a shared appreciation of Magic and metal, then became colleagues in a Magic shop and, eventually, co-founded Frozen Soul. 

Chad says they didn’t intentionally take inspiration from the immersive worlds of videogames and Magic, but it’s hard not to draw parallels. “I wouldn’t say there is a deliberate connection, but there’s always a connection between what we do in this band and the things we love,” he smiles. “We’re all huge into videogames! This, for us, is a journey just like in any game. We are on a campaign!” 

Michael introduced Chad to brutal death metal bands such as Suffocation, while the singer opened his bandmate up to more old-school, bouncy death metal, such as Obituary and Bolt Thrower, as well as hardcore. All three play their part in Frozen Soul’s music, which frequently decelerates from blistering speed to hammering, vintage grooves. It’s a mixture that piqued the interest of Trivium leader Matt Heafy, who ended up producing Glacial Domination. 

“I guess his manager mentioned to ours that he was a big fan of what we were doing and enjoyed our band,” Chad says of the hook-up. “Matt’s taught me a lot about warming up, and I think what we gained the most from him was patience. He had this opinion of, like, ‘You guys do what you want to do. As long as you’re doing what you want and you love it, others will love it.’” 

He was correct. Glacial Domination dropped last May, and Frozen Soul are now on their first European headlining tour. A run of shows supporting melodeath giants Amon Amarth across the States, alongside Cannibal Corpse and Obituary, will follow in April. The “campaign”, as Chad described it, is going excellently. 

“Part of the reason that Frozen Soul are successful is that our theme transcends a lot of things and a lot of situations,” he says. “It’s rare in life that something like that happens, and it fucking worked out for this band!” 

When we see them onstage later that night, it certainly looks that way. Between songs, the frontman makes speeches championing mental health, thanks the crowd for “taking care” of them, and pays tribute to Cory, adding an emotional weight to the savage riffing. The Underworld is heaving and, at Chad’s command, the audience opens a circle-pit around a column at the heart of the venue. Life is indeed cold but, thanks to Frozen Soul, London is feeling the warmth.

Glacial Domination is out now via Century Media. 

It's been over 20 years since Cattle Decapitation first shared their grotesque vision with the world. Yet the band have never wavered in their mission to push extreme metal boundaries and turn stomachs while they're at it, a combination of grotesque album art and brutal lyrics concerning topics including environmental devastation, genocide and animal cruelty ensuring they never fail to make a mark with each new release.   

Starting out in the realms of goregrind, the band have found space for technical death metal, prog and even black metal in their compositions over their eight album run, latest effort Terrasite earning accolades as one of the best metal albums of 2023. 

With the band selling out shows in the UK and making the jump to arenas as support for Amon Amarth in the US, we thought it high time to catch up with vocalist and chief lyricist Travis Ryan to find out how they went from death metal pariahs to extreme metal darlings. 

Some of the venues you played in support of last year’s Terrasite album were 1,000+ capacity – impressive for a band as nasty as Cattle Decap! Was it your most successful year ever? 

“2022 was the worst year on record personally, but it ended rather amazingly with the band playing our first arenas opening for Amon Amarth. It set the tone for 2023, which was nothing but insane shows on the heels of our new album.” 

How did Cattle Decapitation blow up to the point of playing arenas? 

“I don’t know that there’s any real answer. For lack of a better example, I’ve been calling it ‘the Doom EP effect’. It’s not that Job For A Cowboy’s 2005 Doom EP was this magnificent piece of art; what I witnessed was a band receiving a benefit of ‘timing’ in the form of a fucking golden key to the city. Them and Suicide Silence exploded, and it appeared to be from a generation of kids where it hit them all at a certain time in their lives and just popped. We’re seeing it again now with this… what, third wave of deathcore and this ‘new wave of old school death metal’.” 

2019’s Death Atlas grieved the end of the world. Where did you even start picking up with Terrasite after that? 

“Bug monsters! [See the human/ cockroach hybrid of the cover.] Death Atlas is our most important album musically, but Terrasite blew the doors open from all that misery to finally have some fun concept-wise and some slightly more upbeat bangers.”

 Your ‘unclean’ melodic vocals are pretty legendary at this point. What does it take to maintain that voice? 

“A warm-up I learned from Trey Anastasio from Phish – he uses a straw that you put in about three inches of water in a bottle, and you blow into it while doing this really dumb high to low and back again spectrum. People just aren’t used to hearing vocal melody over a wall of ‘blackened progressive deathgrind’ or whatever the hell you call this stuff!”

Does it excite you to sneak these experimental elements into death metal records? 

“Since the beginning, I have always wanted to subvert the death metal paradigm. I’m considered by some to be a death metal elitist, but in the early 2000s we were pariahs of the local death metal scene. I feel we’re now relishing in the fruits of our labour.” 

How much of your lyrical content should be taken as literal calls for social and political action, versus leaning into the bleakness for extreme artistic expression? 

“When reading the lyrics, you’ll see that I mostly use the words ‘we’ and ‘us’ when describing humans, adverse interactions with the planet, its resources, its organisms. I’ve never claimed to know the answers, but I sure do a lot of bitching and complaining. I can’t say there’s a direct anything in there, other than a disdain for our species.” 

Now on your eighth album, you’re more popular than ever. How did you manage to avoid being one of those bands who are defined by their first few albums? 

“In this manner, Cattle Decapitation are truly an anomaly. In the late 80s through around 1992 or so, I was one of these ‘the first four albums’ kind of guys. The Black Album was absolutely ruinous to the way I viewed bands and music at the time, as I just wanted to hear things get faster and more aggressive. It told me that you may one day feel that your heroes can just turn on you and put their middle finger right up against your face, while smiling all the way to the bank.” 

Do Cattle Decap get much of that? 

“There definitely are a few out there who feel that’s what our best stuff was, but they’re practically silenced by the fans of our last 10 years of output. It’s one of the reasons we don’t play the old stuff live anymore - the crowd dies down when we do. Getting older is a trip, but seeing your band rise and do what you always wanted to do as a young adult adds considerably to the mindfuck that is aging. I thank you all from the depths of my heart, from the superior section of its aorta to its distal, inferior ventricular counterpart. May you survive everything that’s coming.”

Terrasite is out now. 

Morrisound Recording – the Tampa studio where such bands as Death, Cannibal Corpse and Morbid Angel recorded their most seminal albums – is receiving a Historical Marker from Hillsborough County, Florida.

The studio’s previous site in Temple Terrace, on the outskirts of Tampa, will be honoured with the plaque to acknowledge its contributions to the music industry.

Morrisound Recording was a go-to spot for both local and international extreme metal bands in the late ’80s and early 1990s.

Originally used by such burgeoning thrash acts as Toxik and Agent Steel, the studio became a hub for the Floridian death metal scene following the release of Death’s Leprosy (1988) and Morbid Angel’s debut Altars Of Madness (1989), both of which were recorded in Morrisound by producer Scott Burns.

After that, Cannibal Corpse used Morrisound for their first six studio albums, from Eaten Back To Life (1990) to Gallery Of Suicide (1998). Death returned to the studio for their every subsequent studio album, Deicide used it up until 2001, Morbid Angel until 2000 and Obituary until 1994.

Other albums that were recorded in Morrisound include Sepultura’s lauded 1991 release Arise, Napalm Death’s Harmony Corruption (1990) and Cynic’s progressive metal game-changer Focus (1993).

Many of the most beloved metal albums to come from Morrisound were recorded by Burns, up until his retirement from full-time production in 1996.

Morrisound have responded to the news of their Historical Marker by releasing a celebratory t-shirt, listing the 20 best-selling death metal albums to come from the studio.

Morrisound have also commented on Facebook: “We are pleased to announce that Hillsborough County has awarded Morrisound Recording, Inc. a Historical Marker to honor the contributions that were made to the music industry by Morrisound and its staff, especially in the field of extreme metal production.

“The marker will be placed at the site of our earlier studios on 56th St. in Temple Terrace, the site of some of the most well-known extreme metal recordings during the 1980s and 90s.”

Buy your commemorative Morrisound t-shirt via the studio’s website.

Arizona death metal band Gatecreeper have announced their third full-length album, Dark Superstition, will come out on May 17 via Nuclear Blast Records.

The five-piece – vocalist Chase H. Mason, guitarists Eric Wagner and Israel Garza, drummer Matt Arrebollo and bassist Alex Brown – have released lead single The Black Curtain to accompany the news.

Mason says of the song (which comes with a music video directed by Max Moore), “It’s about being trapped between living and dying. A soul trapped in purgatory begging to be brought back by a supernatural force.”

The vocalist also describes Dark Superstition as being centred around the themes of the supernatural, divination and magic.

“Many of the songs incorporate supernatural ideas with my own experiences,” he comments. “But the title itself is a reference to the Superstition Mountains in our home state of Arizona. It’s a beautiful mountain range surrounded by tragedy and legends of hidden fortune.”

Gatecreeper wrote the songs on Dark Superstition with the help of Fred Estby, drummer and songwriter for famed Swedish death metal outfit Dismember. The album was produced and mixed by Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou in God City Studios in Salem, Massachusetts.

Dark Superstition will be Gatecreeper’s first release through Nuclear Blast and follows the EP An Unexpected Reality, which was surprise-released via Closed Casket Activities in January 2021.

Gatecreeper plan to tour extensively in 2024, starting with shows in Asia and Oceania later this month. The band will then support In Flames across North America in May, before playing Damnation festival in Manchester, UK, in November. The full list of dates is available below and tickets are now on sale.

Gatecreeper 2024 tour dates:

Mar 22: Tokyo, JP - Earthdom
Mar 23: Seoul, KR - Club Victim
Mar 24: Bangkok, TH - Mr. Fox Live House
Mar 27: Ho Chi Minh,VN - Coco Bango
Mar 29: Hong Kong, CN - Music Zone
Mar 30: Manila, PH - Eastside by Sandu
Mar 31: Singapore - Esplanade Annexe
Apr 02: Auckland, NZ - Whammy Bar
Apr 04: Gold Coast, AU - Vinnie’s Dive Bar
Apr 05: Brisbane, AU - The Brightside
Apr 06: Newcastle - Newcastle Hotel
Apr 07: Sydney, AU - Crowbar
Apr 09: Wollongong, AU - Dicey Riley’s
Apr 10: Canberra, AU - The Basement
Apr 11: Melbourne, AU - Prince Bandroom
Apr 12: Frankston, AU - Singing Bird Studios
Apr 13: Adelaide, AU - Unibar
Apr 14: Perth, AU - Lynott’s Lounge 

Supporting In Flames:

May 01: Portland, ME - State Theatre 
May 02: Hampton Beach, NH - Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom
May 03: Brooklyn, NY - Warsaw
May 04: Wilmington, DE - The Queen
May 05: Norfolk, VA - The Norva
May 07: Charleston, SC - Charleston Music Hall
May 08: Greensboro, NC - Piedmont Hall
May 09: Atlanta, GA - Buckhead
May 10: Daytona, FL - Welcome to Rockville
May 12: Huntsville, AL - Mars Music Hall
May 14: Nashville, TN - Marathon Music Works
May 16: Pittsburgh, PA - Mr. Smalls Theatre
May 17: Buffalo, NY - The Town Ballroom
May 19: Milwaukee, WI - Milwaukee Metal Fest
May 21: Detroit, MI - St. Andrews
May 22: St. Louis, MO - The Hawthorn
May 23: Oklahoma City, OK - Diamond Ballroom
May 24: Austin, TX - Emo’s
May 25: Houston, TX - House of Blues
May 26: Dallas, TX - House of Blues

Nov 02: Manchester, UK - Damnation Festival

Such is the proclivity for extreme metal musicians to embark on multiple projects that death, doom and black metal supergroups aren’t as rare as found in more commercial echelons. But even by these metrics, the résumés of its members ensured Vltimas’s arrival came with more expectations. However, it was that very gravitas of frontman David Vincent that became the hitch with 2019’s Something Wicked Marches In. 

With his position as death metal’s most recognisable voice, his trademark roars and decipherable diction meant even the most well-executed proposition couldn’t help but sound like, and thus be compared to, Morbid Angel’s unattainable heights.

Where this follow-up thrives is Rune ‘Blasphemer’ Eriksen’s riffs bringing more of an icy, grandiose feel than the more intricate, warped labyrinth of its predecessor. The chemistry of the band is instantly more organic and results in Epic living up to its title, treading the line between imperious grandeur and ridiculous pomposity. 

Never is this more apparent than on the title track’s subversive crawl, with David revelling in a full baritone bellow, and Mephisto Manifesto’s histrionic march, like 1349 covering Judas Priest. After quenching his thirst for violent blasting on Cryptopsy’s recent triumphant return, Flo Mounier uses his powder sparingly, indulging in speed on the aptly titled Scorcher, while elsewhere laying a sturdier foundation for the likes of Miserere and Invictus’s stately ceremony. 

Exercitus Irae’s nefarious atmosphere spits fiendish venom and ostentatious clout, while Spoils Of War, with its grim riffs that suddenly summon a glorious trad metal lead, is another leftfield bolt. While Epic is still undoubtedly dense and masterfully crafted, three luminaries of metal’s underbelly having such an enjoyable time creating an unashamedly bombastic affair is reason enough to applaud its triumph.

Epic is out March 15 via Season Of Mist. 

Maryland death metal veterans Dying Fetus have been grinding out their particular brand of gore-drenched noise for over three decades now. In that time they've helped define the US death metal scene as we know it, appeared in South Park, gone viral through unlikely hashtags and gatecrashing hardcore festivals and played the main stage at Download. We recently caught up with frontman John Gallagher to chat about their entertaining career, censorship and why shocking people is just a little passé

Your latest album, Make Them Beg For Death, continues the rich tradition of brutal Dying Fetus titles. Have any of your song or album titles had to be changed because they were too violent?

“Not the title, but I wanted the artwork for [2017 album] Wrong One To Fuck With to be more gory. We were kind of censored by the record label, like: ‘No, you can’t have any naked people on the cover being murdered.’ That’s the first time we were censored so I just didn’t push anything on this album.”

Do you think it’s possible for death metal to truly shock people in the modern age?

“I think everyone now is past that. It’s all been done now, right? Unless you’re brand new to death metal. It’s been done over and over again a million times, so topics like necrophilia are just kind of ‘whatever’ at this point. We’re not trying to be offensive, because I don’t think you can really offend anyone anymore.”

Your song Second Skin was featured in South Park a few years ago. Was that something you enjoyed?

“Of course, that was a big moment for us – one of our shining achievements! As a fan of comedy and not taking things so seriously, it was an honour to be involved with that.”

Did you know in advance what the plans were for that song and how it would be featured in the episode?

“I had no idea. I was on vacation and received a text message from our manager, saying, ‘You’re on South Park!’ It was a shock to me! They contacted [Dying Fetus’ label] Relapse, I think, but it was very quick and last-minute. I wasn’t butthurt, it was killer – I hope somebody else uses our music. Put us in a new movie, or something!”

It’s now been 10 years since #WhyNotDyingFetus [a tongue-in-cheek campaign to get Dying Fetus on the Download festival lineup] first started trending on social media…

“Yeah! I think the industry and youth of today have loosened up and aren’t terrified of Dying Fetus anymore. So many more people are attending our shows now: we’re getting a thousand people in places where we once only got, like, 250 or 300. So, that movement, #WhyNotDyingFetus, I think it worked! We’re playing Download again [in 2024], and Download are including other death metal bands and kind of embracing that scene.”

What was your reaction when you first saw that hashtag?

“I was like, ‘Wow! That’s cool!’ We saw that our fans have our back and are pushing for us to be included where we should be included. But still today, in America, there are festivals that turn their backs on us, and they’re like, ‘No, we’re not gonna have Dying Fetus, only because of their name.’ There’s still some prejudice, but #WhyNotDyingFetus encouraged people to put their foot down. If you want us at a festival, I encourage people to email promoters, make a stir.”

Have you ever seriously considered changing Dying Fetus’ name because of promoters not liking it?

“Ha ha, no – at this point we’re stuck with it! In the very, very beginning we considered it, because there was a band called Gorefest who changed their name to GF. I thought that was lame. You started something, so finish with it, you know? We could be DF or Fetus, but that’s not what death metal is about.”

Dying Fetus have been going nonstop for 30-plus years now – is there anything you want the band to achieve that you haven’t already?

“I feel like, going back to what I was saying earlier, there’s this new movement with the younger generation. [Our future] is really in their hands: are they gonna stay into this form of music? I think, if the momentum stays with us, the possibilities could be endless. We could end up supporting larger bands, getting into small arenas – our trajectory is improving. We could be on some late-night TV shows or movie soundtracks or something!”

If you were to soundtrack a film, who’d be the dream director to work with?

"Steven Spielberg!”

'Why not’, right?

“Ha ha! Let’s get to the top, I don’t wanna short-sell anything! Let’s go for the big guys!”

Originally published in Metal Hammer #383

Whisper it, but… death metal can be a little bit silly sometimes. Gargling into microphones, writing about zombies and cannibals, smashing out blast beats until your limbs fall off – unless it’s done right, it can easily become ridiculous.

However, death metal’s never, ever funnier than when it turns its grisly gaze towards the most unexpected songs. And the 10 covers below prove it. From La Macarena to Livin’ La Vida Loca (yes, really), no matter whether they’re well done or dogshit, these are the most hilarious death metal reinterpretations.

Children Of Bodom – Oops!… I Did It Again (Britney Spears cover; Are You Dead Yet? bonus track, 2005)

Led by the exuberant Alexi “Wildchild” Laiho, Children Of Bodom understood the silly side of extreme metal. Seldom is that more evident than that time they took Britney’s girly pop classic and jammed it through a meat grinder. Laiho howling lines like “It might seem like a crush” atop screeching pinch harmonics is inherently (and, we believe, intentionally) hilarious, then his contrast against Jonna Kosonen’s silken vocals during the chorus sounds legitimately incredible. Silly, obnoxious yet deftly executed? It can only be Bodom.

Six Feet Under – Night Crawler (Judas Priest cover; Graveyard Classics IV: The Number Of The Priest, 2016)

From the endearingly batshit to the just plain shit. By 2016, Six Feet Under had become infamous for their Graveyard Classics cover album series, each one tackling hits by the likes of Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and The Monkees(?!) in increasingly limp ways. The schadenfreude peaked during chapter IV, opener Night Crawler’s crusade for Judas Priest-level badassery thwarted by frontman Chris Barnes’ warbled ranting. The ex-Cannibal Corpse man’s voice was all but gone at this point – yet his pipes continue to disintegrate today.

Opeth – You Suffer (Napalm Death cover; 2017)

This one’s just Mikael Åkerfeldt and the boys having a laugh. Despite Opeth’s speciality of sweeping progressive metal, their leader has long held an affinity for grindcore scallywags Napalm Death. So, in 2017, the band used a break during their set at Germany’s Rock Hard festival to blast out You Suffer – twice. Hearing a record-breakingly short, 1.3-second song from these experimentalists was amusing, to say the least, but what made it was Mikael’s banter afterwards: “Which version was the best one, do you think?”

Brujeria – Marijuana (La Macarena) (Los Del Río cover; Marijuana, 1998)

Your guess is as good as ours, frankly. In 1998, Hispanic iconoclasts Brujeria decided not only to cover the soundtrack of every school disco you ever attended, the Macarena; they also made it about drugs. What turns it from eye-rolling cringe into something actually amusing, though, is the band going all-in, sampling the bubbly beat beneath their grunts and riffs. Call the parody pointless or childish all you want, but no one can deny the effort that was put into all this ridiculousness.

Fleshgod Apocalypse – Blue (Da Be Dee) (Eiffel 65 cover; 2021)

Extreme/symphonic maestros Fleshgod Apocalypse dress as undead classical composers at every gig, yet this cover of Blue (Da Ba Dee) is still the most nonsensical thing they’ve ever done. Hearing that melody recreated by a scathing guitar line on top of flurrying blast beats is pretty cool, however, and we can’t help but applaud the imagination. It also makes more sense than that time they referenced Baby One More Time midsong. What is it with death metal bands and Britney, you think?

Deicide – Black Night (Deep Purple cover; The Stench of Redemption bonus track, 2006)

Deep Purple’s Black Night boasts one of the most iconic riffs to ever burst from a guitar. It’s an energising boogie no matter the context you hear it in, but Deicide’s version… isn’t. Instead, Glen Benton and co. ratchet up the speed to near-lethal levels, and by the time you recognise the start-stop guitars, you can’t help but chuckle and go, “What the hell has happened here?” Still, “subtlety” has never exactly been this band’s game, so we shouldn’t have been surprised.

Vader – I.F.Y. (I Feel You) (Depeche Mode cover; Future Of The Past, 1996)

In its original form, I Feel You is the seductive and vulnerable opener to Depeche Mode’s fantastic Songs Of Faith And Devotion. Unfortunately, “seduction” and “vulnerability” aren’t exactly in death metal’s dictionary. We think that, with their stab at the anthem, Vader wanted to turn the romantic into the threatening, subverting such lines as “It’s just the dawning of our love.” But it just doesn’t work. Singer/guitarist Peter Wiwczarek’s whispered vocals sound like an unseasoned goth teen in his very first band. 

Amon Amarth – Aerials (System Of A Down cover; Surtur Rising bonus track, 2011)

System Of A Down’s Aerials is a dynamic classic of the nu metal takeover. Meanwhile, Amon Amarth are a burly viking horde who only know one mode, and it’s full-on death metal savagery. The pairing was never going to work. The Swedes’ go at the megahit sadly reaches comedic proportions when a previously sensitive chorus, powered by Serj Tankian’s graceful singing, this time pairs pensive guitars with a barrel-chested, shouting choir. The tonal dissonance is striking, to say the least.

Anaal Nathrakh – Man At C&A (The Specials cover; The Whole Of The Law bonus track, 2016)

This one’s more funny in concept than execution. How can you not utter “What the fuck?” when you notice that extreme metal mavens Anaal Nathrakh have covered The Specials? However, once you press play, the duo give you no choice but to take this readaptation seriously, pummelling with abrasive melodies and vocals that stand tall and imposingly on their own two feet. If you had no knowledge of the original song, you’d simply assume this is another untouchable scorcher from one of Birmingham’s best.

Mors Principium Est – Livin’ La Vida Loca (Ricky Martin cover; Embers Of A Dying World bonus track, 2017)

Fair play to Mors Principium for having both the confidence and vision to see a beloved pop banger and go, “We can do it.” In the end, the Finnish veterans served up a suitably, ridiculously bombastic slice of melodeath. Then, once you get past the silliness, you realise it was actually remarkably handled. The Latin-esque melody sounds every bit as exciting here while also getting a metallic boot up the arse, and the momentum ever falters. A true display of mad genius, this.

Death metal has kept a, let’s say, “distant” relationship with the piano. Sure, there have been outlaws like Children Of Bodom and Dark Tranquillity that have embraced keys over the years. But, by and large, the genre has looked at tickling the ivories in the same way you’ve looked at pop-ups which demand you update your laptop: without giving a shit.

These two disparate concepts are nonetheless being bridged by a virtuoso YouTuber called Catherine Fearns. An author and musician based in Liverpool, UK, Catherine has used her incomparable talent at piano to become a cult sensation among metalheads. She’s boldly covered tracks by such death metal brutes as Cannibal Corpse and In Flames, with the resulting videos quickly dazzling in the underground. Together they have 27,000 views, and it’s such an innovative idea that they have so much space to grow in viewership, so many other barrel-chested bands they could try and sophisticate.

Of course, in even attempting to recreate scorchers like At The Gates’ Slaughter Of The Soul with nought but her fingertips at full speed, Catherine’s impeccable at her instrument. Her rearrangement of Carcass’ Heartwork turns a scathing melodic death metal classic, laced with jagged guitars and anguished screams, into an elegant yet upbeat romp. Dare we say, it’s borderline cinematic, with the high-flying harmonies easily capable of soundtracking a climactic chase scene given the opportunity.

The most impressive piece, however, comes when Catherine ventures from the more palatable pastures of melodeath into the demented hellscape that is Cannibal Corpse’s Scourge Of Iron. In its original form, this absolute bruiser has no give, bombarding you with blast beats and Corpsegrinder’s roars like repeated barrages of cannonfire. Yet, Catherine still makes the song hers. As her fingers wobble her way through that previously distorted intro, it sounds like the entrance music for an adventure movie’s biggest baddie.

At time of writing, Catherine only has 920 subscribers on her channel. But, the sheer ingenuity of what she’s making and the grace with which she does it (not to mention the countless other diabolical-sounding artists she could cover) tells us her audience will blow up soon. Subscribe and marvel at how somebody can play piano so fast and hard without snapping their wrists.

Death metal veterans Dying Fetus seemingly stole the show at a two-day hardcore festival that took place in Tampa, Florida this past weekend (January 6-7). Fya Fest 2024 took over the Shanna and Bryan Glazer community centre with a stacked lineup across both days that included sets from the likes of Trapped Under Ice, Twitching Tongues, Incendiary, Militarie Gun, Sunami and many more - but it was Dying Fetus' forty-five minute set on Saturday night that has got most people talking.

Despite being a little out of place on a lineup absolutely dominated by punk and hardcore bands, Maryland's finest went down an absolute storm with a pulverising, eight-song set that included their cover of Integrity's Judgement Day, originally recorded for 1998's Killing On Adrenaline. The band were joined by Twitching Tongues frontman Colin Young for the song, which, along with Dying Fetus' own material, sparked some of the most enthusiastic pits of the whole weekend.

Dying Fetus' set has since gone viral on X (formerly Twitter), with the band's name trending on the platform and footage of the show amassing hundreds of thousands of views. Many longtime fans are clearly delighted to see the death metallers going over so well with a different audience.

"Seeing Dying Fetus in that environment is such a rare and special thing," remarked one user, while another jovially noted: "must’ve watched every clip there is of that Dying Fetus set, would’ve slapped my nan to see that irl."

Fans who were actually at the show appear just as excited about the whole thing, with one stating proudly: "Can’t believe I was a part of this music history. I got to beat people up to Dying Fetus."

Watch footage from the historic gig below.

Dying Fetus' most recent studio album, Make Them Beg For Death, was released in September of last year and received critical acclaim. In an 8/10 review for Metal Hammer, writer Ken McIntyre surmised: "It’s at this point when you realise you are truly in the presence of masters. Nine albums and four decades in, Dying Fetus still enthral and repulse." 

The band will play Electric City in Buffalo, New York this May before heading to Europe the following month to return to this year's Download Festival. 

A cloud of incense wafts through the air conditioning system and into the lobby of Legacy Max, a 2,000-capacity venue in downtown Taipei, Taiwan. After a few remaining ticketholders are ushered inside, the heavy doors swing shut and attention turns to the person responsible for all this smoke: a diminutive Buddhist nun, Master Miao-ben. She’s a member of death metal band Dharma, and is onstage swinging a censer as part of their signature ‘purifying act’ that takes place before every show.

We’re at Awaken, a Buddhist electronic music festival. Judging by the well-heeled audience, who are wearing designer labels like Balenciaga rather than metal t-shirts, many are waiting to see artists higher up the bill, such as EDM DJ Kenny Musik. No one knows how Dharma will go down as openers. As the incense wafts back to a terraced VIP area, complete with sofas and rosé champagne, there’s a palpable sense of anticipation and unease.

The festival organisers open the event with a brief English-language introduction to dhukka, the concept of suffering, explaining that all actions are connected. In other words, “every low is tied to every high”. Metalheads intrinsically know this: it gets quiet right before it gets loud. Having invited Buddha’s protection for band and audience via the purifying act, Master Miao-ben hits a chime and chants. Then the rest of Dharma appear, and launch into The Divine Mantra Of Avalokitesvara, a song based on the popular mantra ‘Om mani padme hum’.

The six robed members of Dharma crouch low, buffered from the torrent of noise blaring from the speaker stack. They are flanked by a zither player and a flautist from an all- female traditional Chinese orchestra – Dharma frequently invite special guests to play with them to demonstrate the concept of ‘anatta’, the idea that humans have no self, because we are constantly changing. Frontman Joe Henley, his face smeared with black paint and fake blood, emits primal growls. The audience are stunned. 

Formed in 2019, Dharma are one of about a dozen Buddhist metal bands around the world – and yes, it’s a genre, especially in countries that are predominantly Buddhist, such as Thailand and Myanmar, and China. According to the latest government statistics, Buddhists make up 35% of Taiwan’s population, with another 33% following Taoism. Both are philosophically aligned and draw on similar imagery. Buddhist temples dot Taipei’s cityscape, and monks deliver sermons on late-night TV.

While many bands reference Buddhism on album covers and in lyrics, few go as far as Dharma, who have a nun in their ranks. And the other five full-time bandmembers have converted to the religion. Dharma drummer Jack Tung was the first to be drawn into Buddhism. Prior to starting Dharma, he consulted Buddhist masters for their views and suggestions. They scoffed at him or told him to look elsewhere, until he found collaborator Master Song, who held the first rituals for the band, though later withdrew due to failing health. Master Miao-ben came onboard in 2020.

Jack’s relationship with frontman Joe stretches back 17 years, as they played together in death metal band Revilement and grindcore outfit Stench Of Lust. When Jack asked his friend to join Dharma, off the back of four demos, it was a no-brainer. “I said ‘yes’ right away, because the music was really good,” recalls Joe, when we catch up with the band before their set.

Joe was born in Canada, but moved to Taiwan in May 2005, following a suggestion from a journalism school roommate who had previously lived there. He never left. Proving their devotion, all Dharma lyrics are Buddhist sutras (ancient texts) and mantras originating from Sanskrit. “Mantras are usually too short to fit into a traditional song structure such as a verse and a chorus, so we have to repeat them over and over,” explains Jack.

Each song is layered over a cataclysm of cymbals. There’s a precedent: Taiwanese temple music, ‘Beiguan’, is played by marching bands who use cymbals and horns for a simplistic, ear-piercing melody to alert the public of a passing deity. Dharma’s whole sound is wrapped in death metal, and their take on Buddhism is darker than you might expect. They believe in avenging spirits, annihilation of self, and a fundamental emptiness at the heart of all things.

“We all come from a death metal background, and are inspired by bands like Cannibal Corpse, Incantation and others. We want to show people that within Buddhism there are spirits like vengeful deities who come back to right wrongs, and achieve peace through a multitude of annihilations,” explains Joe. “Our sound is dark and aggressive, but there is still an important message.”

Buddhism has always made use of music for ceremonies, with chimes, bells and gongs struck to mark the passage of time or to signify the changing of a sutra. “We do chanting in the morning, afternoon and evening,” explains Master Miao-ben. Despite having less than a dozen shows under their belt, Dharma are attracting attention. To promote Awaken, a photo of the band was plastered on the side of buses in Taipei. They have just been nominated for Best Band and Best Rock Album (for their second full-length, last year’s Three Thousand Realms In A Single Thought Moment) at the Golden Indie Awards – Taiwan’s equivalent of the BRITs.

However, they’re also facing challenges. They had to cancel their European tour due to exorbitant travel costs, and Joe has been denied entry into China for unknown political reasons – potentially because of his work as a journalist covering migrant worker issues, or his writing credits on songs by politically minded compatriots Chthonic. Joe credits Buddhism for giving him strength – or at least the belief that everything will work out in due time.

“To be honest, not being able to tour internationally really doesn’t bother me. Whatever happens is meant to happen. I would love to spread this music as far as I can in alive setting, but there are things way beyond our control,” he says. “Even if I can’t perform anymore, I hope the band can take it as far as it can go.” 

Back at Awaken, Dharma launch into their most popular song, Amitabha Pure Land Rebirth Dharani, which is about getting rid of one’s karmic obstacles and facilitating rebirth in ‘Pure Land’, a celestial realm. The riffs, fills and growls might be characteristic of death metal, but a backing chorus track makes the song more accessible. Jack is the undisputed leader of the band, sitting proudly behind his blood-red, 19-piece drum kit, complete with a full-size gong. A team of five people are required to bring this set-up to the stage.

As Dharma play Great Compassion Dharani – a song calling for the Buddha to rid them of their sins, and instil peace and joy – a pair of monks standing near the entrance to the VIP area seem amused. When asked what they think about a Buddhist music festival, a nun named Ching Guang says young people like “rock’n’roll”, and Buddhism needs more activities to attract them.

Buddhism might be an established tradition, but Joe also thinks “metal is like a religion”. There’s a strong sense of community, and gigs are like rituals. By fusing the two, the band could be onto something powerful. In March, they performed at Megaport – the festival started by Chthonic – in Kaohsiung, south Taiwan. Joe was blown away by the crowd’s reaction.

“Some people in the pit prostrated themselves and other people were crowdsurfing in the lotus position. We never direct the audience to do anything, it just comes about naturally,”explainsJoe.“By the end of the show, many people were in tears, and in fact, I was also in tears.”

Originally published in Metal Hammer #381

Between deathcore, melodic death metal and the dozens of other subgenres you might care to name heading right back to the source, death metal has seldom been healthier than it has over the past few years. 

Whether it's old school heroes Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation and Obituary releasing fantastic new records, bands like In Flames re-discovering their melodeath roots or the new school of death metal bands clawing their way to prominence with Crypta, Tomb Mold, Frozen Soul and so many more, 2023 has been a great year to be a fan of all things extreme. 

That in mind, we've assembled ten records that represent the best that death metal had to offer in 2023, trying to cast the net as wide as possible to include as many individual schools as we could. Can't see your favourite? Check out the Metal Hammer reader's poll for the 50 best metal albums of 2023. 

Burner – It All Returns To Nothing

On their debut album, Burner instantly announced themselves as rising stars in the stacked UK metal scene. It All Returns To Nothing routinely crashed the muscular riffs of death metal into hardcore’s scurrying drums and seismic breaks, but it’s the songs that barged even further that felt truly special. When Burner also integrated black metal, post-metal and powerviolence into their unyielding onslaught, they became one of the nastiest bands on the entire planet. MATT MILLS

Cannibal Corpse – Chaos Horrific

Another year, another brilliantly brutal Cannibal Corpse album. Sixteen albums in and the magic still hasn't faded on Chaos Horrific, it's insistent viciousness setting the nerves on edge and making you want to gnash your way through your own cheeks. Like the old saying goes - if it ain't broke... RICH HOBSON

Cattle Decapitation – Terrasite

With each new release Cattle Decapitation have found new ways to stun and disorient with vicious barrages of extremity. At the same time, the band's message - often tied to environmental and animal rights concerns - becomes all the more important, making Terrasite the perfect showcase for just how vital Cattle Decap are in 2023, preaching a very real vision of man-made disaster amidst some of their most impressively inventive songs to date. RICH HOBSON

Crypta – Shades Of Sorrow

Crypta have been personally endorsed by Morbid Angel’s Trey Azagthoth, so you know they’re fucking good without even hearing a note. This year’s Shades Of Sorrow only reaffirmed that the Brazilians deserve such support, slamming old-school death metal into black metal, thrash and melodeath without ever hitting the brakes. With the likes of Stronghold and The Other Side Of Anger being slyly catchy as well as ferocious, Crypta’s rise will only accelerate. MATT MILLS

Frozen Soul – Glacial Domination

With their 2021 debut, Frozen Soul set out a stall of classic 90s death metal in the vein of Obituary and Morbid Angel with a frost fixation. Glacial Domination takes that same blueprint and finds ways to make it fresher and more exciting than ever, refining their songwriting to produce some genuine growl-along anthems in the likes of Morbid Effigy, Abominable and Assimilator. RICH HOBSON

In Flames – Foregone

In Flames might have helped popularise Gothenburg's melodeath scene in the early 2000s, but for the past decade the band had moved decidedly away from their roots. Foregone is an enormous return to form for the band, taking their experience and knowledge from playing massive venues and applying it to the explosive, dramatic riffing that made them so vital at the turn of the millennium. RICH HOBSON

Obituary – Dying Of Everything

Obituary continued to be Obituary on their 11th album. However, they’re the only band truly capable of pulling that off, so it was more than fine. In fact – with standouts like War and The Wrong Time being unified by their disdain for humanity’s recent, bloodthirsty ways – the Florida titans sounded more purposeful than they’ve been in ages. Such vigour makes it astonishing that 2024 will mark their 40th year as a band. MATT MILLS

Orbit Culture – Descent

Now a decade into their career, Orbit Culture are truly hitting their stride. Their brand of melodeath has always embraced the genre's maximalist tendencies with an ear for the kind of choruses that deserve to be belted out in an arena setting.  Descent delivers them by the boatload, striking the balance between seething intensity and breakout, triumphant moments that feel like they could have come from trad metal's glory years. RICH HOBSON

Plaguemace – Reptilian Warlords

Channelling the buzzsaw riffs of Entombed via the medium of gleeful caveman brutality, Danish newcomers Plaguemace embody the no-frills bludgeoning of classic death metal. But beneath their brutish growls and stomps lies a concept about, well, Reptilian Overlords, the band making no secret of how much fun they're having making utterly brutal music. Set to tour in early 2024 with Crypta and Nakkeknaekker - another incredible DM newcomer band - these are well worth keeping an eye on. RICH HOBSON

Tomb Mold – The Enduring Spirit

On their fourth album, Canadian innovators Tomb Mold fully settled into their distinct soundscape, delivering blunt-force death metal with technical precision and slurries of psychedelia. The Perfect Memory (Phantasm Of Aura) and 11-minute behemoth The Enduring Spirit Of Calamity struck with some of the most lethal riffs of the year, toeing the line between melody and aggression so perfectly that you barely notice… because you’re too busy moshing like a wild thing. MATT MILLS

Death metal icons Cannibal Corpse have hopped on one of rock music's most unlikely current bandwagons, as they've announced that they're releasing their very own officially licensed colouring book.

The Official Cannibal Corpse Colouring Book will be released on December 1 (just in time for Christmas!) via Rock 'N' Roll Colouring, the same company behind licensed colouring books from the likes of Iron Maiden, Alice Cooper, Motörhead, Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy and Megadeth. Featuring a host of some of the band's most infamous and gory artwork, designed by artist Vince Lock, fans will be able to either faithfully recreate or add a new spin to iconic album covers including 1990 debut Eaten Back To Life, 1991's Butchered At Birth, 1992's Tomb Of The Mutilated and their most recent record, this year's Chaos Horrific.

“Going over art for the book, it was surprising to see just how much 30 years of collaboration yielded," says Vince Locke. "It’s rare that I see it all compiled together. There are a few pieces that had to be included, some that were favourites of myself or the band, and some that just lent themselves well to colouring. I’m always playing, trying different materials and techniques. Hope you do the same with these colouring pages. Try watercolour markers, crayons, and coloured pencils, adding your own details. You’ll probably go through a lot of red, but be creative, have fun, make it your own!”

The first ever colouring book to come badged with a Parental Advisory Warning, the book has reportedly already been banned for sale in Germany, where Cannibal Corpse's early albums were also famously banned for years, along with any live performances of songs from those records.

You can pre-order your copy of The Official Cannibal Corpse Colouring Book here.

Death metal band Frozen Soul got fans to play Magic: The Gathering in the moshpit this weekend.

Shortly after the Texan five-piece played the Wrecking Ball Metal Madness festival in Dallas on Saturday night (October 28), videos were uploaded to X (formerly Twitter) showing metalheads playing the card game while surrounded by a swirling pit.

The band acknowledged the footage as genuine in a series of posts.

“We stay castin spells,” they posted yesterday morning.

They later added as an explanation: “Someone held up a magic deck in the pit and I made someone play him while everyone else circle pit around them, LFG! Wrecking ball magic madness!”

Metalsucks reports that the game of Magic lasted for “about three or four songs”.

Frozen Soul, from the nearby Fort Worth area, formed as a band in 2018 and are currently touring to promote their 2023 album Glacial Domination. The album was produced by Trivium singer/guitarist Matt Heafy.

In October, Metal Hammer named Frozen Soul as one of 10 up-and-coming death metal bands every self-respecting metalhead needs to know.

Hammer journalist Matt Mills wrote: “Frozen Soul make death metal all about the cold, and they live the gimmick with their frosty cover art and the dry ice they bring to live shows. The Americans’ debut album, Crypt Of Ice, went down so well that Trivium frontman Matt Heafy produced its 2023 followup, Glacial Domination.”

The Magic moshpit is far from the only crazy antics to have happened in heavy metal crowds this year. Back in March, technical death metal band Archspire got their crowd to play a game of Twister in the pit.

“Guess what time it is, it’s fucking Twister time,” singer Oli Peters told the audience, before adding: “This is the dumbest shit I’ve ever done.” The vocalist later got the pit to crash into the two players during their game.

TikTok has proven to be an effective - if slightly surprising - ally to heavy metal over the past 18 months, offering bands old and new fresh opportunities to reach a whole new audience and gain mainstream attention that has in turn resulted in thousands of new fans championing their cause. 

But while the smash success of Ghost's Mary On A Cross or Sleep Token being crowned metal's sexiest new band and breaking 2 million monthly listeners on Spotify thanks to the platform can be explained as "popular band gets more popular as they reach new audiences", we suspect nobody could have predicted that TikTok could supercharge the careers of some 90s death metal underground darlings. 

But that's exactly what's happened to Mortician, the Yonkers, New York band's 1999 song Rabid soundtracking over 7000 videos as TikTok users shared the song's B-movie horror sample intro and gurn-inducing riff to great effect.

Given fresh life as a meme, videos range from a clip of the song playing over scenes of movies - American Pyscho, The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent -  to make-up showcases, fitness videos and even a stomach turning cooking vid. 

With many videos passing the 100,000 view mark, it's unsurprising that Rabid has also been propelled to the top of Mortician's Spotify listening stats. Currently the song stands at just shy of 4 million plays at the time of writing. That said, both the title-track and  from their 1999 record Chainsaw Dismemberment have also passed the 1 million plays mark, showing that fans aren't just gravitating to one stand-out. 

Rabid comes from the band's second album Chainsaw Dismemberment, released in June 1999 with many tracks featuring samples from horror classics (When A Stranger Calls, Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer, The Crazies) and B-movie splatter-fests (Silent Night, Bloody Night, Bloodeaters, Zombi 2) alike. Rabid itself features a clip from 1971 exploitation horror I Drink Your Blood. 

Although Mortician haven't released a new record in almost 20 years, the band still remain active in 2023, playing sporadic shows in the US. 

Check out the Rabid TikTok clips below, or for a more comprehensive list check out the tag on Tiktok.

Built on a backbone of blast beats and tremolo picking, death metal has always been a proudly complex genre. And, since its inception, the likes of Death, Atheist and Obscura have pushed its technicality as far as possible. In celebration of the skill needed to be a good death metal musician nowadays, we got Fernanda Lira – singer and bassist of Brazilian rising stars Crypta – to list the 10 hardest songs to play in this genre.

Death – Overactive Imagination (Individual Thought Patterns, 1993)

“It was hard for me not to just include 10 Death songs! Steve Di Giorgio, man! He’s one of my main inspirations, his bass riffs are insane. But I think Overactive Imagination, from Individual Thought Patterns, is just a compilation of some of my favourite extreme metal bass riffs of all time. It’s tough because there’s a bit of everything and he plays super fast.”

Cannibal Corpse – Frantic Disembowelment (The Wretched Spawn, 2004)

“This song’s complicated because it’s just a crazy sequence of notes and scales and stuff like that. I watched a guy on YouTube play it and it is just 100 percent absurd. Alex [Webster, Cannibal Corpse bassist] and Paul [Mazurkiewicz, drummer] are my two main references: I really look up to Alex when I’m mixing an album. I just love the way his bass sounds.”

Necrophagist – Stabwound (Epitaph, 2004)

“Any Necrophagist songs should be considered a nightmare for bassists – ha ha! – because they’re just pure insanity. Stabwound, I’m not gonna say it has a bass solo but, from one minute on, basically the whole song is like a bass solo. It’s just this never-ending series of bass notes! I’m not trying to put myself down, but I don't think I'd ever be able to play it!” 

Suffocation – Infecting The Crypts (Human Waste, 1991)

“This is one of my favourite songs from one of my favourite death metal bands. I like Suffocation and Derek [Boyer, bassist] a lot. On Infecting The Crypts, there are a lot of progressions and just relentless notes. What’s a bit complicated to me is skipping strings all the time, and on this song it happens a lot. It’s at least in the top five hardest bass riffs.”

Krisiun – Ageless Venomous (Ageless Venomous, 2001)

“If you’re a Brazilian metalhead, you know Krisiun. I remember one of my friends getting a Krisiun DVD, so, the first time I listened to Ageless Venomous, I also saw them playing it live. That was shocking for me. You assume it’s complicated when you hear it, but when you see the person playing it, you see the real thing.”

Nile – Permitting The Noble Dead To Descend To The Underworld (Those Whom The Gods Detest, 2009)

“A lot of Nile songs could fit in here, but I’ll mention Permitting… – I had to write it down because I always say the title wrong! Not only is it fast, but there are a lot of different riffs. There are a lot of tempo variations and they do this thing where, the third time they play the same riff, they add in a different note.”

Vital Remains – Dechristianize (Dechristianize, 2003)

“This would not be a complete list if Vital Remains weren’t here. I was stuck between Dechristianize and Infidel but, on Dechristianize, the bass is more varied. Again, there are all these tempo changes. Whenever you start to get comfortable with the tempo, they suddenly change it again. Vital Remains are probably a nightmare for drummers and guitarists, as well.”

Vader – Shock And Awe (Solitude In Madness, 2020)

“Vader are one of my favourite death metal bands. All the fast Crypta songs are highly influenced by Vader, because they’re written by me and I’m listening to Vader all the time! Shock And Awe, it’s not the fastest, but it’s probably one of the faster Vader songs. It makes it very complicated for whoever plays using their fingers, like me.”

Deicide – Dead By Dawn (Deicide, 1990)

“Deicide are one of the bands that made it easier for me to understand what death metal is. As weird as it may sound, some of their songs are really accessible, with catchy choruses. Dead By Dawn, I included this one because there are so many notes, but there are also so many breaks. It’s getting fierce and then it stops. It’s a crazy song!”

Behemoth – Shemhamforash (Evangelion, 2009)

“This isn’t the trickiest song on this list, but I wanted to include Behemoth because I love them! Ha ha! Shemhamforash, from the Evangelion album, is just very chaotic. There are a lot of things going on at the same time. There are so many parts and it’s so fast: it’s this blend of furious speed and a crazy structure.”

Crypta’s new album, Shades Of Sorrow, is out now via Napalm. The band play Bloodstock Open Air, Derbyshire, in August.

On paper, death metal seems like a hard thing to sustain for almost four decades. It’s a genre reliant on all-out extremity, from blast beats to throat-shredding snarls and knucklehead riffing – how much room for variety is there in that?!

However, there are still inventive new bands emerging, taking the formula perfected by Death, Obituary and Entombed in the late ’80s down unexplored avenues. For proof, here are 10 up-and-coming death metal acts with fresh ideas that demand to be heard.

Orbit Culture

You can tell Orbit Culture are the real deal just from the bands they’ve toured with: Trivium, In Flames and Meshuggah, among others. And their music justifies the hype. The Swedes’ new album, Descent, fuses the fancy guitar stylings of melodeath to nu metal’s immediate, forceful stomp.

Crypta

When you’re in a new death metal band, having Trey Azagthoth personally ask you to support Morbid Angel on tour is the ultimate seal of approval. Crypta’s blackened and sometimes thrashy take on their genre has made them Brazil’s mightiest export since the members’ former band, Nervosa, and they’ve been playing across the States relentlessly since they formed.

Tomb Mold

By mixing primal death metal with some woozy psychedelic sounds, Tomb Mold have become one of North America’s most treasured underground bands in barely half a decade. New album The Enduring Spirit is both brutal and intellectual, pushing into tech-death intricacy and the songwriting scope of prog. Pure evil genius in musical form.

Frozen Soul

Frozen Soul make death metal all about the cold, and they live the gimmick with their frosty cover art and the dry ice they bring to live shows. The Americans’ debut album, Crypt Of Ice, went down so well that Trivium frontman Matt Heafy produced its 2023 followup, Glacial Domination.

Burner

Burner are the best new death metal band that the UK has to offer. Their 2023 debut, It All Returns To Nothing, was an innovative, rampant fusion of death metal riffing with the scrapping pace of hardcore masters like Converge. We cannot wait to see how they’ll follow up on it.

Blindfolded And Led To The Woods

After forming as a literal joke of a deathcore band, Blindfolded… drastically broadened their canon. Thank God they did, because their Nightmare Withdrawals and Rejecting Obliteration albums are ferocious masterpieces, consolidating the nastiest aspects of death metal, sludge and metalcore. When it comes to Kiwi metal, they’re in the top tier.

Scab Hag

Self-described as “Cincinnati death metal bog-dwellers”, Scab Hag are introducing the murky, suffocating atmosphere of Ohio’s swampland to extreme metal. Their claustrophobic sludge/death metal has already earned the attention of the US metal press, and you can expect that popularity to fester when debut album Wading Through Mephitic Filth drops on October 31.

Celestial Sanctuary

If you’ve been to a London death metal gig since the pandemic ended, you’ve probably seen these Brits and their skull-walloping riffs opening. Celestial Sanctuary seem to be inescapable in the underground, but they deserve the attention: their songs put hulking heaviness at the forefront and don’t waste any time.

Coffin Mulch

There’s a death metal revolution going on in Glasgow, and Coffin Mulch are at the epicentre of it. Their 2023 debut album, Spectral Intercession, is pure groove, endowed with the filthy chainsaw guitar tone of the early ’90s Stockholm scene. You’d be hard-pressed to find any filthier death metal this year.

Flesher

Flesher are revisiting the very roots of death metal. Their old-school bruisers eschew blast beats and tremolo picking, instead favouring snare smacks as loud as shotguns and sluggish, barbaric riffing. The power trio’s new debut, Tales Of Grotesque Demise, is a must-hear for fans of classic Death and Bolt Thrower.

When history asks Montréal brutal tech-death OGs Cryptopsy how they spent their pandemic, the answer will involve sole original member Flo Mounier increasing velocity on his drums; guitarist Christian Donaldson engineering/producing half the albums released since 2020 (give or take); bassist Oli Pinard joining another band, Cattle Decapitation (he’s also in Akurion, Vengeful and Neuraxis); and vocalist Matt McGachy keeping the alcohol industry afloat. His beer- and metal- focused podcast, Vox&Hops, is now north of 400 episodes. The culmination of the above – plus the 11 years since their last full-length and five since The Book Of Suffering EPs – is As Gomorrah Burns’ dizzying maelstrom.

On the surface, the band’s eighth album is just that, consisting of the million notes and beats crammed into every growling minute inherent to high velocity, technical death metal. But more intensive listens will reveal what separates Cryptopsy from the majority of that cohort. Lascivious Undivine opens with a full-court press showcasing Flo’s continued hummingbird wing battery and Christian’s streamlined grind/ noisecore riffing style. The trick being that these redline capacities – not to mention Christian’s panning wizardry – are employed towards a cohesive greater good that’s as much Rust In Peace as Dying Fetus’s Reign Supreme. Godless Deceiver and Ill Ender may possess head-spinning aptitude, but the jagged stops-starts, fretboard gymnastics and Matt’s demonic-spawn ululation are sculpted into songs that are, dare it be said, as fun as they are challenging.

As Gomorrah Burns stands out when it dares to move beyond the pale, mixing in sludgy, tectonic plate grooves on Praise The Filth and slappin’n’poppin’ autobahn funk on The Righteous Lost. Those moments are blended into a half-hour of complex explosiveness of the sort that will have nearby bomb squads donning protective suits.

Ghost are one of heavy metal's biggest post-Millennial sensations. They've scooped up awards, toured with the likes of Metallica and Iron Maiden, headlined festivals and even gone viral on TikTok. The band's mastermind, Tobias Forge, is the man behind their incredible rise to fame, but Ghost was by no means his first stab at the big time.

In the 90s, Forge formed Repugnant, the gothic death metallers who'd split up before their infamy grew in underground metal circles. Looking back on those days now, Forge appreciates that trying to hit the heavy metal big time with a death metal band may have not offered the most seamless route to success.

“I learned the hard way in the late 90s that wanting to play 80s-inspired death metal with my band Repugnant was painfully out of touch with what was going on at the time," he tells Metal Hammer. "It broke my heart; I wanted us to be signed to Roadrunner and support Slayer. That never happened unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately, as it kept me grounded for a few more years and if those things had happened maybe I wouldn’t be here today.

“Repugnant had a close shave with success," he continues. "We signed to the [Dutch] label Hammerheart, which at the time felt like we’d made it because the first thing they did was take us out on our first tour, supporting the American band Macabre. They were a favourite band of ours – still are, and whenever we play Chicago they come to the shows – and at that point it felt like we might be going somewhere, but we quickly parted ways with Hammerheart because we couldn’t agree. It felt like our chance and we’d blown it.”

As it happens, Forge would eventually recalibrate and begin putting together the project that'd catapult him to metal legend in Ghost. So, all in all, things worked out pretty alright for him. Read more from Tobias Forge in the latest issue of Metal Hammer, out now. 

Conan O’Brien’s done tons for the heavy metal scene over the years. During his days as the host of Late Night, the comedian and ex-Simpsons writer put a spotlight on Lamb Of God, At The Drive-In and Linkin Park in their prime. That said, we never want to hear the man attempting death metal singing ever again.

Earlier this year, Coco was hosting his podcast Conan O’Brian Needs A Fan and talking to an admirer called Davyd. The quiffed comic asked Davyd about his music taste, and is told it extends through everything from reggaeton to death metal. “Oh, you like death metal?” Conan asks. “What are your favourite death metal bands?”

“I like Slipknot,” Davyd replies – who, as co-host Sona Movsesian correctly counters, aren’t death metal. Nonetheless, Conan and The Nine have history. The band raged their way through The Heretic Anthem on Late Night in 2001, and the host later pranked one of their audiences by making them watch an opening band called “The Slipnutz”: four singers slipping on peanuts for a bit.

“Slipknot used to come on my show regularly,” Conan says. “I like those guys.”

Davyd also says he’s a fan of US deathcore band Dr Acula. “Oh, I see what they’re doing there,” Conan says once he hears the name. “I’m just piecing it together now. Their other band is Frank N. Stein.”

Then comes the death metal voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for orthopaedic surgeon Frank N. Stein!” he shouts. After an enthusiastic “2! 3! 4!” comes intense gargling, with some “death”s and “die”s thrown in. It’s standard death metal parody fare, but Conan’s done a lot for heavy music over the years, so we’ll let it slide.

“Is that what you think death metal is?” Movsesian, quickly becoming the metalhead hero of the piece, laughs. “They just say, ‘Die, die, die’?”

“Death! Death! Die! Die! Rot! Rot! Rot! Rot!” Conan persists. “You’re in a never-ending hoooooole!”

To Conan’s credit, though, the bit begins to break cliche when the pitch on his microphone is turned all the way up. At that point, we’re blessed with the idea of death metal being roared out by chipmunks – and, yeah, it turns out pretty damn funny.

Watch the full clip below:

It was August 14, 2021, and – deep in the bowels of Glasgow, Scotland – something had started to stir. That night, nascent death metal band Brainbath played their debut gig: a putrid, whites-of-your-eyes blast of beer-swilling, old-school death metal at Belterfest 3. First up, on a lineup of mostly thrash bands, they were taken back by the reaction.

“What was really quite mad looking back is we literally had no music out,” says lead guitarist Kenneth ‘Kendo’ Woods. He cites lockdown as a driver behind the feral appetite for new, extreme music in the city. “We were literally the first band anyone had seen in nearly a year-and-a-half, and folk went absolutely mental.” 

That momentum has now spread across Glasgow. Right now, you can head to any dingy basement – or venues like Audio, The Cathouse and Ivory Blacks – and you’ll find emerging local bands like Brainbath, Coffin Mulch and Rancid Cadaver banging out fetid, ’80s-style death metal to packed rooms of punters. Other bands like Penny Coffin, whose members are spread across Scotland, and Dunfermline’s Tyrannus have made Glasgow their centre of operations, rounding out a buzzing local community that’s the most exciting heavy movement the city has seen… well, ever.

“I've not seen the underground metal scene in Glasgow be so together before,” says Coffin Mulch vocalist Al Mabon, who also runs independent label At War With False Noise. “You go to a gig now and 100 people turn up, there are folks bouncing off the walls and stage-diving and madness going on, and everybody’s buying t-shirts and records.” 

For Kendo – who also runs imprint Macho Records, on which he released Brainbath’s self-titled 2020 debut – the scene formed out of necessity. While mid-noughties mainstays like Scordatura, Cerebral Bore and Bonesaw and slam reprobates Party Cannon have long flown the flag for modern death metal north of the border, he notes there was a distinct lack of new, old school-inspired death metal bands to rally behind. That, as well as the frustrating tendency for many metal bands to skip Scotland during UK tours, led Brainbath and other bands to take matters into their own hands.

“We’ve got some of the most passionate, extreme metal fans in the world in Glasgow,” he says. “We just went, ‘You know what, why don't we just do it ourselves? Why don't we make the music that we love that never comes to see us?’”

That DIY attitude has bled defiantly into every aspect of the community, building up from the grassroots. “There was no budget whatsoever,” shrugs Penny Coffin singer/guitarist Joe Kelly of the band’s nihilistic April 2023 EP, Conscripted Morality. “Anything outside of the art and mastering has been done for basically nothing. Most of it was done in our kitchens and in my living room.”

In June, Al self-released Coffin Mulch’s punk/sludge-splattered debut album, Spectral Intercession, selling over 1,000 copies in two weeks. “We’ve been offered record deals and I just say no, I don’t give a shit about them,” says Al dismissively. “If we were signed [to a bigger label] would we have been able to do the album with the artwork we had, in a gatefold sleeve, with five colours of vinyl? Would we have been able to do it on our own terms without anybody interfering?”

Meanwhile, as Tyrannus singer/guitarist and gig promoter, Callum Cant, asserts, there’s a “concentrated effort to organise and make things better for the scene and hype each other up”, aware that success for one band will water down to everyone else. All of the bands we interview attend and promote each other’s gigs, and were quick to voice their support for Coffin Mulch when they supported Conjurer and melodeath legends Carcass on two Scottish dates back in May. Callum organised the release show for Coffin Mulch’s Spectral Intercession, while the CD release for Penny Coffin’s Conscripted Morality was handled by At War With False Noise, with Kendo putting out the vinyl on Macho Records.

That sense of pride and authenticity in their scene has attracted both long-term and new death metal fans in their droves. “There are fans saying they’ve not heard or seen this type of death metal since the late ’80s, early ’90s,” says Penny Coffin bassist Garry Ross. “Then we’re seeing a lot of younger fans who are getting into this kind of music for the first time, and we’re almost their gateway in.”

While all the bands lean sonically on old-school death metal, they’re keen to push the genre forward, eschewing the tired gore tropes of old. Tyrannus fiercely pitch themselves as anti-fascist; Coffin Mulch’s 2022 single, Into The Blood, focuses on veganism and animal rights; and Penny Coffin’s lyrics tackle British colonialism. 

Meanwhile, all of these bands want to capitalise on the momentum surrounding the scene to cultivate a more forward-thinking, inclusive community for future fans. “I’m aware that there are no death metal bands in Glasgow with lassies in them, and it is still a very male-dominated scene, but I would love that to change,” Coffin Mulch’s Al says. “I’m adamant that we should be making more of an effort to do under-18s gigs. I want kids to come and have fun and form their own bands – and I want to release their records.”

Here's something you don't see every day: a marriage proposal in the middle of a death metal mosh pit.

When Danish 'Pitch Black and Heavy Death Metal Tragedy' band Strychnos informed fans on Instagram that they'd been booked to play the prestigious Copenhell metal festival, annoucing "the next time  we’ll ascend from our graves will be on Friday the 16th of June. We play the Hades stage at 15:00. Pitch Black Death Metal in the bleak light of day", they surely can't have anticipated that they would end up providing the backdrop to a seriously cute if wildly unorthodox marriage proposal.

Happily for the rest of us, fellow metalheads filmed the moment, which was then posted on the festival's official Instagram account. These sort of public gestures can sometimes go horribly, painfully, crushingly wrong, so there's a collective holding of breath from the watching hordes as the unsurprisingly shocked recipient of this romantic gesture clasps her hands to her face in disbelief before giving her answer to her kneeling boyfriend.

Watch the clip to see how it played out:

Obviously the caption accompanying the footage - "We wish the happy couple a STORT TILLYKKE from the whole COPENHELL team!" - is something of a giveaway... But the joy on the faces of metallers gathered to watch Pitch Black Death Metal is sweet to see, and the ensuing wall of hugs which envelops the happy pair is just too cute.

The seriously impressive line-up for the 2023 event, held from June 14 - 17, included Guns' N' Roses, Slipknot, Pantera, Def Leppard, Ghost, Gojira, Clutch and more.

The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom is the biggest thing to happen in gaming this year. The latest installment in Nintendo’s long-running and mega-successful series has been surrounded by the kind of hype that has prompted queues at games stores all over the world in advance of its launch at midnight on May 11.

For Zelda fans queuing at a GameStop store in Edinburg, Texas, that wait became slightly less tedious when local death metal outfit Severance rocked up outside the store with their gear and began playing live. 

While death metal might not be everybody’s cup of tea, the people there seemed to get into – not least a bunch of pre-teens who busted out their own circle pit as the band played.

Luckily for fans of impromptu death metal gigs, someone was on hand to film the action. If you can tear yourself away from the new Zelda for 30 seconds, check out the footage below.

For death metal fans, 1992's Milwaukee Metal Fest boasted an embarrassment of riches. Deicide were booked as headliners for the July 18 all-dayer, topping a bill which also featured Obituary, Cannibal Corpse, Cancer, Brutal Truth and Malevolent Creation among others.

Scanning down the event flyer, one could easily miss the promise of a 'special appearance' from King Diamond and - more randomly - LA grunge rockers Dogstar, featuring "Keanu Reeves of 'Bill and Ted'": it was a gig that the Hollywood superstar would come to look back on with great affection.

Dogstar were no Wyld Stallyns, and their popularity never threatened to derail Reeves' burgeoning Hollywood career, but the bassist took the band seriously... at least once they changed their name from Small Fecal Matter. The LA group - who also included Days Of Our Lives/Seinfeld actor Robert Mailhouse on drums - were labelmates of Tool on Zoo Entertainment records, recorded two albums - 1996's Our Little Visionary and 2000's Happy Ending - and played shows with David Bowie and Bon Jovi, as well as performing at the 1994 Glastonbury festival.

But the group's appearance at the Milwaukee Metal Fest is one that has lived long the memory of Keanu Reeves. The actor revisited the day in an interview with GQ magazine in 2019. 

"We played Milwaukee Metal Fest," he said, and quickly added, "Got killed."

"I think we played close to [NYC hardcore crew] Murphy's Law," he recalled. "Imagine. So we played a Grateful Dead cover, at Milwaukee Metal Fest. We were, like, 'They hate us. What are we doing here? What can we do? Let's do The Grateful Dead cover [later identified by Spin as New Minglewood Blues]… They were just like, Fuck you, you suck. I had the biggest grin on my face, man."

Happily, thanks to the wonders of The Internet, we can all share in this magical musical memory, as footage of Dogstar's set is on YouTube.

Watch it below:

But the story does not end here, for both Dogstar, who split in 2002, and the Milwaukee Metal Fest, which ceased operations two years later in 2004, are back!

Last week Dogstar shared an image from a brand new band photoshoot, and they are hoping to share new music with the world later this year.

"We will be rolling out some new music this summer, followed by some gigs," a social media post confirmed. "As soon as it's all figured out we will let everyone know immediately. So much to do, but rest assured, we are on it and have assembled a fantastic team that are helping us. We are also going to make a music video to support our first tune. That's all I can say now.

"Can't wait to share our new music with everyone. It's the most satisfying and meaningful batch of songs we've ever done. Thanks again for being so patient with us. We truly have the best, most loyal fans!"

The Milwaukee Metal Fest is also coming back later this month, as Hatebreed vocalist Jamey Jasta bought the rights to the festival last year: taking place from May 26-28, the event features Biohazard, Anthrax and Lamb Of God as headliners, with Machine Head, Napalm Death, Dying Fetus, Corrosion of Conformity, and - in a throwback to 1992 - Obituary, included a stacked line-up. Full details here.

"I am so grateful and thrilled that [Milwaukee Metalfest founder] Jack Koshick has passed the Milwaukee Metalfest torch off to me," Jamey Jasta stated last summer when announcing the news. "He is a visionary and we will carry on the MMF legacy for years to come. So many of us have great memories from Milwaukee Metalfest, and the time is right for it to return."

"Milwaukee Metal Fest has been a labor of love for me," added Koshick. "I started working on it when I was 29; I am now 66. I want to thank all those living and dead for making this dream come true. Most of all, I want to thank the bands, fans, and crews that made this happen. The time has come to move on. I feel Jamey Jasta and his partners will do a fine job representing the brand. Until we meet again, I love you all."

There's a strong argument for melodeath being the single most influential strain of heavy metal to have emerged in the last thirty years. Without that scintillating mixture of razor-sharp death metal riffs and catchy-as-crabs melodies, we'd have no Killswitch Engage, no Trivium, no Bullet For My Valentine, no Parkway Drive, no Bring Me The Horizon, no...well, you get the picture.

With the genre's influence on modern metal as powerful as ever, here's a handy guide to melodic death metal's evolution across the last three decades, via the albums that have helped move the genre forwards the most. 

Carcass - Heartwork (1993)

Not content with being one of the pioneers of grindcore, Liverpudlian extreme metal heroes Carcass also went and established the blueprint for melodic death metal with their timeless fourth album, Heartwork. Packing a near-endless supply of killer riffs woven around hooks so big they'd snag a killer whale, it was exhilarating, groundbreaking and way ahead of the game - so much so that it still sounds better than 99% of what came after, three whole decades on. The dream team combo of Jeff Walker's gravelly snarls and throbbing bass lines, Bill Steer and Michael Amott's twin guitar attack and Ken Owen's skin-battering drumwork has rarely been equalled, meaning that for many, melodeath's first definitive statement remains its greatest.

At The Gates - Slaughter Of The Soul (1995)

Melodeath may have been established in the UK, but the genre will forever be inexorably linked with Gothenburg, Sweden. Not least thanks to At The Gates' masterful fourth album, Slaughter Of The Soul, which reigned in some of the experimentation they had flirted with on previous records to produce a straight-for-the-throat, 34-minute, all-out assault of scything riffs, soaring melodies and taut, pummelling percussion, captured marvellously by melodeath's producer-in-chief, Fredrik Nordström. It was a record that'd inspire a thousand crappy rip-offs (not to mention some pretty damn good bands, too!), confirming At The Gates as one of the singularly most influential metal bands of their generation.

In Flames - Clayman (2000)

Emerging around the same time as their peers in At The Gates and Dark Tranquillity, fellow Gothenburgers In Flames were the first band of them all to truly test just how big and polished melodic death metal could sound without becoming too watered down or cynical. Clayman delivered on that experiment in style; the likes of Pinball Map, Swim and the album's title track sounded instantly arena-ready, while the immense Only For The Weak remains melodeath's biggest ever crossover hit. Admit it: those iconic synth lines are pounding their way through your cranium at this very second. Carcass and At The Gates may have set the bar, but with Clayman, In Flames officially took melodic death metal overground.

Arch Enemy - Anthems Of Rebellion (2003)

With melodeath bigger than ever in the early 00s and a generation of metalcore bands emerging in its wake, former Carcass man Michael Amott had been steadily building Arch Enemy up as one of the scene's most exciting names. Come late 2000, original Arch Enemy singer Johan Liiva had left, replaced by an unknown German vocalist named Angela Gossow. It proved to be a genius hiring: Gossow became one of the 2000s' most recognisable metal personalities, giving Arch Enemy a much-needed injection of swagger and stage presence to go alongside her ferocious, paint-stripping roars. With 2003's Anthems Of Rebellion, Amott perfected his splicing of melodeath tropes with the kinds of big, ultra-cheesy hooks usually reserved for his beloved stadium rock bands. Gossow, meanwhile, booted the door down for women in extreme music, the video for We Will Rise becoming a staple of rock TV channels during that era.

The Black Dahlia Murder - Nocturnal (2007)

Strangely, despite the genre's immense influence on US metal through the early half of the 2000s, America struggled to export a melodic death metal band of its own that could stand toe to toe with the Swedes. Enter: The Black Dahlia Murder. Just as the melodeath template was starting to feel a little on the stale side, Michigan's finest arrived on the scene to inject it with a new sense of vitality and brutality. 2007 breakthrough album Nocturnal remains, for many fans, their definitive statement: buzzing riffs and clattering blastbeats peel off each other at a dizzying rate, all circled around the gnarled shrieks of the much-missed Trevor Strnad. Throw in a meaty modern production job by the newly appointed Jason Suecof and you have a true melodeath classic, courtesy of the scene's most consistent band this side of the millennium. 

Between Cannibal Corpse frontman George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fisher’s obsession with winning plush toys in claw machines and donating them to charity, and Gojira’s environmental campaigns, death metal has a weird habit of producing extreme music’s loveliest people. 

Now we can add Obituary drummer Donald Tardy to those ranks. Although his day job involves smacking a kit with the sound of blaring guitars and big brother John’s growls in his ears, he moonlights as the co-leader of Metal Meowlisha, a charity that looks after stray cats in his hometown of Tampa, Florida. 

Donald created the charity in 2004 with his wife, Heather, and it operates on a “trap – neuter – return” (TNR) model, which means they care for feral felines while preventing them from having kittens. 

“There are colonies of cats all over, hiding behind bowling alleys and apartment complexes, by McDonald’s and Taco Bells,” the death metal veteran explains via a video call. “So, we get the kittens and any feral adults out of there, and then they get their vaccinations and get fixed. They get to live out their lives, but they don’t keep reproducing, which helps stop the overpopulation problem.” 

Tampa’s home to a ton of strays. Metal Meowlisha only covers the 1sq km surrounding Donald’s house, yet it looks after more than 30 colonies and 130 animals. The drummer noticed the abundance of unowned cats in Tampa in the early 80s, when his family moved there from Miami. 

“We’ve always been an animal family,” he says. “Since I can remember, we always had dogs, cats, birds and hamsters. My brother has snakes.” John shouts from somewhere off-screen: “Got two of those!” Donald laughs. “I don’t know how, but we adopted a skunk,” he remembers. “He was a mean son of a bitch. He was nocturnal, so, when we went to bed, all we heard was him in the closet or under our beds. What do you do? You grab all the couch pillows and pile them in your bed so, when he wakes you up, you can throw them to get him out of the room. Ha ha ha!” 

Donald currently has a pet cat called Yimmy. He remains the sole exception Metal Meowlisha has ever made to its TNR approach to animal care. “He’s just about to turn 17 years old,” Donald says, “so he’s an old guy now, but he is my best bud when I’m home. He doesn’t ask for much. He’s just a sweet boy.” 

Donald and Yimmy have been besties for most of the cat’s life. When they first met, Yimmy was “very young” – and one of his eyes was hanging out. One rush to the vet later, Donald discovered it was a miracle that Yimmy was still drawing breath at all. “He was shot with a BB gun,” he remembers, surprisingly calmly and matter-of-factly.

“When they laid him out on the table and gave him anaesthesia, they realised that he had 11 bullets in him, all throughout his body. Someone was shooting that poor kitten again and again, and somehow he survived. If that person that shot him that many times saw how sweet a cat Yimmy is, they probably never would have. But, then again, evil people do horrible things to animals.” 

The Tardys’ love for the animal kingdom and the natural world also manifests on Obituary’s new album, Dying Of Everything. The title sounds prophetic, considering it was written before the pandemic, but the lyrics lament the ways humanity is fucking up the planet – from waging wars to exacerbating climate change. 

“We all love the outdoors,” John explains, as he sits down beside his brother. “We love being outside and living in Florida, all the fishing and camping. Every year, you see more of that being taken away from you. The more everybody can do just a little bit, the better everybody is, even if it’s something as simple as recycling.” 

“So many people are so lazy,” Donald adds. “They just throw trash out the window or as far away as they can: that ‘the further you throw it, the less you think about it’ mentality.” 

However – and despite John howling lyrics such as ‘Perish to the ground, cometh living hell’ on lead single The Wrong Time – Obituary refuse to lose hope. On a personal level, Donald declares with a loud laugh that he wants Dying Of Everything to go platinum. 

“What’s that, about a hundred records now?” he grins. And, he doesn’t think the world’s completely doomed, just that people need to start taking the threats to it seriously. “Things only get overwhelming if you let them,” John offers. “I think, if everybody takes care of the little things first, then maybe some of the big things will follow.”

To find out more, head to Obituary.cc/helpcats.html. Dying Of Everything is out now via Relapse

‘METAAAAAAAAAAL!’ Not even three seconds into The Book Of Heavy Metal, the opening song – and title track – of Dream Evil’s third album, the Swedish trad metal revivalists were nailing their colours to the mast in bombastic, overblown and entirely unironic fashion. 

But then, that had been the point of Dream Evil from its inception, guitarist and founder Fredrik Nordström building the band around the glory days of yore, when titans like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest were defining the genre, shifting millions of records in the process. In some ways, it was almost ironic. Fredrik had earned his fame helping to shift the goalposts of how metal looked and sounded through his production work with Gothenburg’s legendary melodic death metal scene. 

Sweden’s answer to Ross Robinson, Fredrik’s work on legendary releases by At The Gates, Dark Tranquillity and In Flames set the tone for vast swathes of modern metal, while his later work with Opeth and Dimmu Borgir helped transform the extreme metal landscape. Needless to say, people weren’t exactly expecting denim and leather super-fandom from his own band. 

“There were definitely people who expected Dream Evil to have that melodic death metal sound, so it was quite the surprise when they got a real heavy metal album instead!” Fredrik chuckles. “I actually discovered heavy metal really late. I was playing in a band with this guy who introduced me to bands like Accept. The first time I heard Balls To The Wall I went bananas, like: ‘Play it again!’” 

Unfortunately, Fredrik’s discovery came right as traditional metal fell on its arse. While he found great success with his production work, there was a sense of terminal optimism to his efforts to get his band, Snakeskin Cowboys, off the ground while the likes of Nirvana and Faith No More ruled the airwaves. Thankfully, his production work also laid the seeds for Dream Evil, a trip to Thessaloniki seeing him cross paths with guitarist extraordinaire Gus G. 

“Gus wanted to move to Sweden and build a music career, but it seems like nobody wanted him back then!” Fredrik says. “He was trying to survive by offering guitar lessons but literally nobody was taking them at the time, which is crazy considering if you went back to the same music stores he was putting those ads in five years later, you could buy his signature guitar.” 

The pair struck up a friendship and agreed to collaborate on a new band. Meanwhile, the ever-turbulent tides of music were shifting as the archetypes of the classic metal sound began to make a comeback. Germans Blind Guardian had released their seminal power metal albums Imaginations From The Other Side (1995) and Nightfall In Middle-Earth (1998), while in the US Iced Earth had shifted more than 60,000 records with 1996’s The Dark Saga and 1998’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. But it was the efforts of Sweden’s homegrown heavy metal heroes Hammerfall that truly set Dream Evil in motion. 

“I was asked to record the first Hammerfall album, [1997’s] Glory To The Brave,” Fredrik recalls. “That’s actually how I met Niklas [Isfeldt, vocals] and Pete [Stålfors, bass]. I felt like if they could start making heavy metal music, I could also do that.” 

With most of the members now in place, the only thing that remained was to fill the vacant drum spot. For that, Fredrik turned to a local legend: former King Diamond/Mercyful Fate drummer Snowy Shaw. 

“Snowy was a hired gun from the beginning,” Fredrik says. “I’ve read his book and he said that when I approached him with these classic style heavy metal songs in the 90s, he thought he was on Candid Camera. He didn’t believe I could work on the death metal stuff and still want to sing these cheesy songs, ha ha! But he’s one of the best drummers on the planet, and a very good friend, so he was a natural fit.”

Released in 2002, Dream Evil's debut Dragonslayer was a triumphant, fist-pumping blast of old school heavy metal. Contrary to their label’s fears, the record quickly earned a fanbase of young fans who had missed the boat on metal’s glory years, but yearned for its bombastic sound. 

“Hammerfall opened the doors,” Fredrik admits. “When I saw them playing the last shows of Glory To The Brave they’d got about 600 people in this tiny room, and more or less nobody was over 20 years old. When we played our own shows, it was still the same – for those kids, bands like Dream Evil and Hammerfall were their first proper heavy metal band.” 

A little over 12 months on from recording their debut, Dream Evil already had a follow-up on the shelves. Titled Evilized, it broke into the Top 100 in the Swedish and Japanese charts, cementing the sense that there was something special starting to build around the group. This made it all themore critical that their third album should build even bigger. And, as with their formation, it was working with Hammerfall that ended up inspiring the next evolutionary step of Dream Evil’s career. 

“The idea for The Book Of Heavy Metal actually came while I was recording with Hammerfall,” Fredrik explains. “I was doing the guitar solos with Stefan [Elmgren] and was like, ‘We should put harmonies on the guitars here and here.’ And he was like, ‘No, that’ll sound too much like Helloween.’ So I put my foot down: ‘No, that’s in the book of heavy metal!’ It became a running joke – I’d ask Snowy to do a drum fill and he’d ask why: ‘Well, it’s in the book of heavy metal!’” 

Not ones to waste a killer title when they find one, Dream Evil decided that The Book Of Heavy Metal shouldn’t just be the title of their next album, but a mission statement for what they wanted to achieve. 

“We tried to make the whole record feel like a real contribution to heavy metal history,” Fredrik says. “I spent 10 weeks on that album; we’d be recording until we literally ran out of material, writing so much we’d even be doing it in the toilet. But if you’re gonna call your album The Book Of Heavy Metal, it has to be good to live up to its name.” 

The writing for The Book Of Heavy Metal ended up being so productive the band wrote 64 songs. In keeping with metal’s ‘power to the people’ ethos, they brought in a ‘heavy metal jury’ to pick the 12 best songs for the final release, gathering non-musician metal fans they had met, ranging from electricians to bankers and teachers. 

“We wanted the input of the people who’d actually buy the album,” Fredrik explains. “We had a few boxes of beer, bottles of Jack Daniel’s and basically said, ‘Have fun.’ Then got them to pick their favourites.” 

While both the band and the heavy metal jury were effusive in their excitement about the album’s title track – The Book Of Heavy Metal (March Of The Metallians) to give its full title – again the band faced opposition from the label when it came to choosing a lead single. 

“Century Media said it was too metal to release as a single!” Fredrik reveals. “So I got back in touch and said, ‘I strongly recommend, as a music producer, that you take this song and release it.’” 

Released on July 13, 2004, The Book Of Heavy Metal this time broke the top 50 in the Swedish and Japanese album charts, and the band were invited out on tour with NWOBHM legends Saxon. Unfortunately, they didn’t get much chance to enjoy their spoils. 

“You could tell things were really taking off for Dream Evil, but everybody quit!” Fredrik says. “Gus left when he realised Dream Evil were never going to be a full touring band. With Snowy, we got into a silly fight over bullshit.” 

Though Fredrik was later able to coax Niklas and Peter back into the ranks with assurances the band wouldn’t be on tour eight months of the year (“That’s what the label had wanted,” Fredrik admits), the founding line-up of Dream Evil was fractured.

Even so, The Book Of Heavy Metal remains a definitive statement from the band, its unstoppable march, histrionic shrieks and virtuosic leads ensuring it couldn’t be more classically metal if it’d been spawned from the loins of Rob Halford. 

But although the song is one of Dream Evil’s biggest, it doesn’t quite take the top spot on streaming platforms – its 15 million streams on Spotify lag behind The Chosen Ones, which has had more than 27 million listens. 

“It’s funny, actually… The reason Chosen Ones is so high is because people kept using it when uploading their own videos of World Of Warcraft, and using Chosen Ones as the soundtrack on YouTube,” Fredrik says delightedly. 

“But we have done so many interviews where somebody says, ‘If an alien came down from outer space and wanted to know what heavy metal is, what would you show them?’ And my answer is still – and always will be – The Book Of Heavy Metal.”

Liquid Death, a metal AF canned-water company whose tagline is, "murder your thirst", have shared a hilariously bizarre advert for their new range of iced tea beverages. 

The 80-second ad was inspired by Monty Python's Hell's Grannies sketch, and features a group of grannies (well, men or women dressed as elderly ladies), ripping through some gnarly death metal in their band, shooting fireworks from their asses, skateboarding and simply causing general havoc. 

To start, a backwards cap-sporting fellow, iced tea in hand, quips, "Iced Tea? Come on, Liquid Death, this is like my grandma's energy drink". Seconds later, we're introduced to the team of partying pensioners, whose antics come across like something from a spin-off of Jackass' 2013 comedy Bad Grandpa. And considering the video was directed by Jackass co-creator Jeff Tremaine, he is keeping the spirit of the show well and truly alive.

"We grew up on Monty Python and Jackass, so it's no surprise we made a homage to some of our heroes," Liquid Death VP of creative Andy Pearson tells Muse.

"Tea has been around for thousands of years. In fact, most people probably see it as something their grandma drinks. With that little kick of caffeine, it's almost like the original energy drink.

"Ironically, most of the tea that's on the market today is packed with caffeine and sugar. As a health beverage company, we set out to make a killer iced tea that didn't come with all the unhealthy junk – something your grandma would probably even approve of."

This isn't Liquid Death's first metal-driven campaign. Back in 2020, the company recruited Gruesome drummer Gus Rios to write and record a heavy metal album called Greatest Hates, which was inspired by the hate-filled online comments received by the brand about the product. 

Later that year, the water tycoons released a second album, Greatest Hates, Vol. 2, featuring guest appearances from members of Alkaline Trio, Rise Against, and more.

Check out the ad below:

John Tardy knows a thing or too about death metal. His band Obituary are one of the scene’s original Big Four, while the singer’s guttural growl has influenced countless vocalists who came in his wake. With the Obies having just dropped brutal new album Dying Of Everything, we asked John which of his fellow death metal vocalists he thinks are the greatest of all time (naturally, he’‘s too modest to include himself, so let‘s assume he’s the 11th name on the list). This is what he told us…

Cronos (Venom) & Tom G Warrior (Celtic Frost)

John Tardy: “Tom Warrior and Cronos were the two singers that got us wanting to be as heavy as we possibly could. Both are so unique and heavy that it really got me heavy singing. We still love playing a Frost song a lot live.”

Quothorn (Bathory)

JT: “Bathory was one of the earliest death metal albums blasting in our garage. Classic, evil and so heavy it is a must for everyone.”

Chuck Schuldiner (Death) & Glen Benton (Deicide)

JT: “Hometown boys of mine from Florida. Chuck and Glen were and are good friends of mine and always love both their voices. Chuck set a standard early on for all of us with Scream Bloody Gore, a death metal classic. Glen and Steve [Asheim, Deicide drummer] have been putting out steady classics all this time.”

Jeff Becerra (Possessed)

JT: “Jeff of Possessed has such a unique voice and I have always loved what he does. Seven Churches still gets played a lot at my house.”

Darren Travis (Sadus)

JT: “Sadus is another band that we toured with very early in our careers and to this day love Darren’s energy and crazy voice.”

Max Cavalera (Sepultura)

JT: “Max is one of the first singers that I met. I first met him when he came to Florida with Sepultura for Beneath the Remains and stayed at my house. Always loved his voice. To this day he sounds as good as ever and he even asked me to sing on one of his Soulfly songs. What an honor.”

LG Petrov (Entombed)

JT: ‘Entombed’s first album Left Hand Path was a great, great record. Got to know him Lars, and he would always show up to our shows and drink all our beer. Love and miss that guy.”

Jeff Walker (Carcass)

JT: “We got to tour with Carcass, and how can you not fall in love with those guys. Jeff Walker's evil sound and great pronunciation is fun to watch every night.”

Obituary’s new album, Dying Of Everything, is out now

Death metal has had such a huge and enduring impact on the evolution of heavy music over the last 30 years that few devoted metalheads will need informing about the contribution of heavyweights like Morbid Angel, Obituary or Death. 

But beyond the obvious classic albums and legendary names lies a vast quantity of equally seminal but less celebrated exercises in brutality, and here are ten of the best and most significant from the first (and possibly second) golden age of underground extremity.

Carnage – Dark Recollections

Carnage are rarely acknowledged for their grand contribution to the early ‘90s Swedish death metal scene, but Dark Recollections more than holds its own against the more regularly celebrated likes of Entombed’s Left Hand Path and Dismember’s Like An Ever Flowing Stream. 

Originally released as a split effort with Norwegian death squad Cadaver’s equally seminal Hallucinating Anxiety, it boasted the classic Sunlight Studios sound, but thanks to some sharp and inventive songwriting, it was anything but a clone of those aforementioned big hitter’s efforts. It also introduced guitarist Michael Amott to the wider metal world and subsequently led to his recruitment by UK legends Carcass.

Necrophagia – Season Of The Dead

Possessed’s Seven Churches may be death metal’s generally acknowledged starting point and Death’s Scream Bloody Gore debut may be the first pure DM album – at least in terms of how we expect the genre to sound – but Necrophagia’s horror-drenched debut came out several months earlier than Chuck Schuldiner’s first foray and remains a criminally overlooked work of influential extremity. 

Raw, chaotic and primitive, it was as inspired by the celluloid works of Argento and Fulci as it was by Slayer or Celtic Frost and, as a result, made a massive contribution to death metal’s eventual vocabulary and aesthetic.

Angelcorpse – Hammer Of Gods

Death metal went through a brief but significant period of struggle during the ‘90s, primarily caused by the rise of black metal and its more easily marketable imagery and ethos. But when it comes to extremity and the virulent stench of evil intent, few black metal bands came close to the vicious, flailing fury of Angelcorpse’s debut album. 

Hammer Of Gods offered the perfect combination of Morbid Angel-style chaos and flat-out metallic rage, as raw, unrelenting songs like Consecration and Soulflayer injected several jolting doses of malevolence into the US crew’s deathly and deadly attack.

Internal Bleeding – Voracious Contempt

Seldom recognised for their vast contribution to the way death metal evolved during the late 90s, Internal Bleeding are strong contenders for the (quite possibly) coveted title of Godfathers Of Slam. 

Voracious Contempt was a straightforward brutal death metal album in many ways, but the Long Island five-piece had a penchant for hulking, lobotomised grooves and breakdowns; a mutant variant on Suffocation’s original hardcore-tinged blueprint and one that has resonated down the decades, having a particularly major impact on the birth and growth of deathcore.

Desecration – Gore And Perversion

In terms of global impact, Welsh death metal has never really been a big deal, but Desecration’s utterly vile (and, therefore, brilliant) debut briefly threatened to turn its creators into death metal’s most notorious band. 

With songs like No More Room In The Freezer, Penile Dissection and Coprophiliac Connoisseur, Gore And Perversion was clearly the work of some truly warped minds, but Desecration had the technical chops and intensity to avoid being mere Cannibal Corpse clones or cynical shock merchants. 

Mind you, copies of the album were seized and incinerated by police in the band’s native Gwent because of the extreme nature of its contents, which only really served to strengthen the band’s reputation as the real deathly thing.

Gorguts – Considered Dead

These days Gorguts are routinely acknowledged as one of the most inventive and experimental bands in death metal, with albums like 1998’s mind-bending Obscura and the more recent Colored Sands showcasing guitarist Luc Lemay’s extraordinary, freewheeling compositional spirit. 

What is less frequently stated is that the Canadians’ 1991 debut is simply one of the best flat-out death metal albums released during the genre’s golden era. Produced by the legendary Scott Burns, it may have conformed to the standard sonic template of the day, but songs like Disincarnated and Rottenatomy were every bit the equal of anything unleashed by death metal’s big names.

Disincarnate – Dreams Of The Carrion Kind

Perhaps better known for being a member of Death, Testament and Obituary at various points in his career, guitarist James Murphy is death metal’s great unsung genius. 

The one and only Disincarnate album is simply a masterpiece of early ‘90s death metal, with a progressive streak a mile wide and levels of technicality and intricacy that few of Murphy’s peers could compete with at the time. 

Much revered by dedicated students of this stuff, Dreams Of A Carrion Kind still sounds incredible today. Listen to Monarch Of The Sleeping Marches and try not to bang your head. Seriously, give it a go.

Impetigo – Ultimo Mondo Cannibale

Hugely influential on the later goregrind scene, Impetigo were disgusting human beings on a mission to terrify and torture. Satan bless their cotton socks. Ultimo Mondo Cannibale was pioneering in its use of horror movie samples and subversive in its underlying black humour, while the overall sloppiness and lyrical perversity of songs like Maggots and Bloody Pit Of Horror made the Illinois quartet obvious comrades of the more celebrated Autopsy. Revolting fun, basically.

Pyrexia – Sermon Of Mockery

As European death metal’s bigger names started to add polish and hooks to their arsenals, the US scene continued to churn out bands that seemed to have a direct line to Satan’s reception desk. 

Pyrexia remain a benchmark for flagrant brutality and Sermon Of Mockery, despite its slightly odd production, stands out as one of the most wilfully unpleasant albums released during the ‘90s. 

If nothing else, it noisily foretold the more groove-driven, so-called ‘slam’ style of death metal that would be later propagated by the likes of Dying Fetus and Devourment. None more guttural, none more grim.

Vital Remains – Let Us Pray

These Rhode Island racketeers have been one of underground metal’s most admired bands for the best part of 30 years, and Let Us Pray explains why. While many other bands were simplifying their musical approach, Vital Remains preferred to indulge in elaborate and epic song structures. 

Like a fervently progressive take on Deicide’s Satanic bombast, songs like War In Paradise and Cult Of The Dead bridged the gap between death metal’s gutter-level grit and the atmospheric horror of the then burgeoning black metal scene. Nearly an hour in length, it was an audacious opening statement and still sounds gloriously hellish and otherworldly 24 years later.

Suffocation have seen it all. Forming back in 1988, the Long Island five-piece were instrumental in forging the sound of death metal as well as experimenting with more technical influences.

But what has changed in death metal since the band’s heyday?

In the below video, vocalist Frank Mullen and guitarist Terrance Hobbs discuss how the scene has changed and evolved since the late ‘80s. Describing the early ‘90s boom as “the most amazing scene you’ll ever see,” thanks to the influx of bands and constant live shows, Suffocation admit that the modern era has led to “copycats” as most ideas have already been done before.

Terrance goes into detail about the impact the internet as had on the music industry as a whole, and that bands (old and new) can no longer just rely on a record label to survive.

Suffocation’s new album …Of The Dark Light is out now, via Nuclear blast.

Even these days, when Swedish death metal is an instantly recognisable force, some locals just won’t have it. No matter how much easier their passports might make their lives, some bands just don’t want to go down that well-trodden (left hand) path, preferring instead to follow their own road. So, here’s a list of ten Swedish bands whose brand of death metal just doesn’t sound that Swedish at all…

Aeon (from Östersund)

Between 1994 and 1999, as Defaced Creation, they tried their best at channelling Deicide’s anti-Christian message. Four of their five members went on to form Aeon, and set out to reach the exact same goal, albeit in a slightly more refined yet in-your-face way. Even Alex Webster from Cannibal Corpse is a fan.

Crypt Of Kerberos (from Eskilstuna)

Once described as ‘Nocturnus with Yngwie Malmsteem on lead guitar’, this lot started off by emulating the down-tuned dirge of local heroes Eternal Darkness, which soon morphed into highly melodic dark prog with (sometimes) shrieked vocals, and their sole 1993 album World Of Myths became a minor underground hit. After over 15 years away from the scene, they reunited in 2010 and have been working on their reunion album ever since.

Deranged (from Malmö)

The longest-serving soldier on this list (despite a short split in 2009), Deranged have been brutalising crowds with their unsubtle, barbaric, US-influenced take on death metal for years. Even future Arch Enemy founder Michael Amott’s contribution to three of the five tracks on their debut Architects Of Perversion didn’t urge them to tone down their attack, and they’re about to unleash their ninth full-length, Struck By A Murderous Siege, later this month.

Insision (from Stockholm)

Insision eventually became famous for being the go-to band of bass player Daniel Ekeroth – author of the Swedish Death Metal book – for over ten years. But when Earache signed them back in 2002, it was because of their technical but lethal form of death metal, which had more in common with Suffocation than with Dismember. Ekeroth is long gone and so is their contract with a ‘big’ label, but they’re still around kicking teeth.

Razorrape (from Malmö)

As proven by their weird song titles (Castrated By Children, Revenge Of The Hermaphrodite Whores, Lady Gagball etc.), these lads seem to have a pretty dysfunctional way of looking at human interaction. And they love pitched vocals and blastbeats. This can mean only one thing: this is grindgore at its filthiest.

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Solution .45 (from Skövde)

When you have Stratovarius’ latest drummer and vocalist extraordinaire Christian Älvestam – capable of effortlessly switching from deep growls to soaring melodic vocals like Mikael Åkerfeldt in Opeth’s heyday – in your ranks, you know you’re not going to get your typical Swedeath dose. After a convincing debut, they’ve released two more albums where they sound like the bastard child of Scar Symmetry (whom Älvestam used to sing for) and, well, Stone Sour.

Soreption (from Sundsvall)

It’s little wonder why wonder Soreption are on Unique Leader records – the go-to place for technical and triggered-as-fuck death metal, run by Deeds Of Flesh’s Erik Lindmark – as they’ve nailed the pinched harmonies and stop-and-go style popularised by bands like Decapitated or Psycroptic.

Spawn Of Possession (from Kalmar)

Initially just a distraction for the then Visceral Bleeding drummer-turned-vocalist, this is totally OTT technical death metal – the Swedish equivalent of Necrophagist, if you will – with German guitarist and former Obscura member Christian Münzner in tow. They’ve been pretty quiet since their last album (2012’s Incurso) but are said to be working on their next assault, to be released sometime next year.

Vanhelgd (from Mjölby)

While their now out-of-print 2008 debut was by-the-book, predictable old-school death metal, Vanhelgd have come a long way since then. Incorporating doom and black influences for a cinematic result (no wonder their leader Mattias Frisk has made a name for himself as a talented graphic designer), this year’s Temple Of Phobos is a particular highlight.

Visceral Bleeding (from Malmö)

All you need to know about this band is that they were kickstarted in 2000 by two Spawn Of Possession members, and that their debut 2005 reissue included a raging cover of Cannibal Corpse’s Stripped, Raped And Strangled. Although they’ve been quiet since 2007, they’ve released three ridiculously brutal albums worth checking out.

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