If y’all been following Metal Monday the past couple of weeks you may have noticed the preponderance of death metal. This is not just because it’s one of my favourite subgenres, but also because so many of the better death metal bands seem to cluster in the early part of the alphabet. Today we have the classic Florida death metal band, Death itself, now sadly defunct after founder Chuck Schuldiner “pulled the plug” in 2001, having died of brain cancer. Though he denied it himself, he and his band were incredibly influential in shaping the genre and you can do worse than to buy their first two albums, Scream Bloody Gore and Leprosy. The latter album is represented here with the title song:
Diamond Head was a New Wave of British Heavy Metal band who never quite made it into the big time, but gained fame because Metallica nicked all their best songs, including this one: Am I Evil:
Finally, another Death Metal band, Deicide, with “Lunatic of God’s Creation. Unlike Death, Deicide is a seriously anti-religious, anti-Christian band; their name of course means “god murder”. It’s all so much posturing however, despite the socalled satanic messages in their music, Deicide doesn’t actually believe any of it, unlike the more extreme Norwegian Black Metal bands. The latter’s loathing of bands like Deicide and touring partner Gorefest might actually have led to an attempt to blow the band up live on stage in Stockholm…
That last video also nicely shows off the “death metal grunt” voice.