“Extreme metal” is one of those labels that is in the eye of the beholder. To some people, bands like Cannibal Corpse or Deicide are too well-known to be labelled as “extreme”, with the shock factor of their lyrics and imagery having worn off decades ago and many metal fans have grown accustomed to the so-called “Cookie Monster” vocal approach. To others, bands like Black Sabbath or Motörhead are extreme for being too rough around the edges, making them yearn for a more palatable artist to turn up next on the radio.
If the definition was up to me, I would state that sub-genres of heavy metal that are classified as extreme metal would be death metal, black metal, and grindcore along with their variations and hybrids. Some would define it to include thrash metal, doom metal, and speed metal, while not including grindcore at all, claiming it is more of a spin-off of punk and hardcore. I like to view it in general as metal bands and styles that typically integrate vocals that are more abrasive than average, using non-traditional techniques, often with lyric passages being less discernible to make out by ear (at least on the initial listen). It’s an umbrella term that I don’t think you’ll find a consensus on a definition. You could also call it “underground metal”, as there are very few bands that become household names or that obtain major label record deals.
In light of this, I sat back and gave some thought of how I was first exposed to the more “extreme” of metal bands and helped to grow my taste in this underground brand of music. I have narrowed down a list to six bands and albums, and would suggest them as a good place to start if you are looking for a familiarity in these styles. You could very well use the following as an extreme metal starter pack. These aren’t necessarily each bands’ best albums and just ones that helped grow my tastes in metal music, but some helped grow my tastes toward other forms of music as well.
Sepultura – Arise
I know this is a thrash metal album and not what many would consider as “extreme” metal, but to me this was a pretty good start towards getting to those groups.
My twin brother and I would do our music shopping in tandem (we still often do this). It’s a good way to stay in sync with what we are listening to, to pass some needed information about a particular artist or album, or to double-check if either of us own a particular album. Back when we were in high school, the latter was much simpler than it is now. Between the two of us, we didn’t have that many albums, even by the likes of Metallica, Megadeth, or Slayer. Bands such as those were among the more mainstream of metal bands, though our combined collections had significant discography gaps. We couldn’t always come across every album we were interested in at the local stores, so to appease our musical appetites we’d have to take more risks on artists with like-minded approaches.
That’s when Brazil’s Sepultura entered our lives.
We knew of the more groove-based playing that rhythm guitarist and vocalist Max Cavalera was working on at the time in Soulfly (who some may classify as “nu-metal”), so name recognition played a factor in my brother’s choice to purchase Arise. I won’t overlook the efforts of Michael Whelan’s artwork in selling the album either. I still don’t know what that monstrosity is on the cover, but is it ever something to behold! It didn’t take long to realize that the album was not quite what Soulfly was, and believe me, that’s not a knock on it. On Arise, Max was busting out riffs that wouldn’t sound out of place on Metallica’s …And Justice For All. On lead guitar, Andreas Kisser was laying down “noise” solos in the realm of Slayer albeit with a stronger sense of melody, often being rather underrated in general for his solo creativity. My brother recently went about transcribing most of this album, and according to him, much of it is more difficult to play than it sounds. As an occasional guitarist that is admittedly weak on the picking hand, I don’t even need to attempt some of the riffage to believe him.
Mostly known for the excellent three tracks that lead off the album in “Arise”, “Dead Embryonic Cells”, and “Desperate Cry”, things gets crazy later on with “Altered State” going in all sorts of varied directions and tempo changes, and moments like “Meaningless Movements” that feature Igor Cavalera putting on a drumming clinic. His playing throughout Arise was as strong as anything else out at the time, and this is from a man that was just 20 years old when this was released! In general, this is not just a good place to start with more extreme forms of metal, but a great place to start with the band. Go backwards in their discography and you will hear some of the earlier attempts at crafting thrash and even proto-black/death metal in the realm of Celtic Frost. Go forward slightly and you will hear material that would largely become an influence on the alternative/groove/nu-metal wave in the late-1990s.
If I were to substitute another album for this in a starter’s pack, Contradictions Collapse by Meshuggah would be next level for a more technical brand of thrash metal, but by the time I’d heard Meshuggah I was already pretty well-versed in much more of metal’s extremities. Without exposure to an album like this, worlds of aggressive, technical metal would have been lost on me. You could say that this album gradually led me towards Martyr, Alchemist, Coroner, and others acts that are further underground and from various corners of the Earth.
While Arise was my brother’s choice for an album during that shopping outing, I went in a slightly different direction.
Obituary – World Demise
This one falls into death metal categorization, perhaps edging out Sepultura regarding which of us twins picked a more extreme album on that day. World Demise is just a really dark sounding album, and the photos in the liner notes and overall theme of the album lend to that. The image of the bird that is covered in oil stands out in my mind in particular, but others depicted issues such as homelessness and drugs. I can’t think of any band that I listened to around this time that covered real-world concerns in such an in-your-face manner. There was Rage Against The Machine, but in spite of being a fan I didn’t have much of an interest in or a knowledge of politics at the time.
Seeing smokestacks on the album cover definitely reinforced in my mind that this would be music with somber themes. When I would later get into a band like Carcass or Brutal Truth, having graphic or mature images as part of the band’s overall presentation I would be used to seeing. Nonetheless, I’d say that the World Demise cover doesn’t necessarily hint at any one genre of music. Pink Floyd’s Animals had obvious commonalities to this photo, and part of me wanted to link this visual to a rap album, partly looking at the typeface of the album title and the darkened art style that could have easily found a home on a Cypress Hill cover.
“Don’t Care”, “World Demise”, “Paralyzing” and “Final Thoughts” are the tracks from the album that were stand-outs for me back then that I remember the best. The album, and Obituary as a group in general, maintain more of a groove that is easier to lock into as a listener that is attempting to get into death metal. Aside from the sludgy, headbang-inducing riffing style, Donald Tardy’s drumming also pops out in terms of technique and overall sound. Unlike many in the death metal genre, you can also make out what their vocalist (John Hardy) is actually saying with relative ease. The overall sound of the band here would be a nice starting place for those that like already like doom metal to give death metal a chance, or anyone that prefers when metal music keeps the beats per minutes on the lower side. Stuff like Cathedral, Confessor, or Yob are natural fits in the collection of an Obituary fan.
For whatever reason, I sold my copy of this album years ago when I was lacking in disposable income to acquire other music. My brother did pick this up in recent years, whose copy I was exploring again while writing this. It’s among the long list of albums I wouldn’t be surprised to get my grasp on again. This revisiting, by the way, has made me rediscover what monster tracks “Redefine”, “Solid State”, “Splattered” and “Boiling Point” are. World Demise has much more depth than I remembered!
Fear Factory – Soul of a New Machine
Fear Factory is another band perhaps not considered very extreme, often lumped into nu-metal categorization due to more groove-oriented playing, a distinct lack of guitar solos, and that their popularity peaked alongside that movement in the late-1990s with Obsolete, but this sure sounded extreme to me when I became aware of it.
In all honesty, Soul of a New Machine wasn’t even my first Fear Factory album (Digimortal holds that distinction), but in the long run it was the band’s debut album (though technically the shelved Concrete was recorded first) that had more of an impact on my music tastes. Both albums initially didn’t sit in my collection for more than a couple of years, oddly enough. I haven’t had a strong desire to revisit Digimortal after it departed my collection several years back (I’ll probably get around to it), but I definitely did with Soul of a New Machine. The fact their official debut album was reissued by Roadrunner Records in 2004 with their Fear Is The Mindkiller re-mix EP as a second bonus disc was icing on the cake. It felt more innovative and more in-line with the type of metal I’m more drawn to, where the riff is king. It rewards you more with repeat listenings, and was less typical of what was being released in 1992 compared to their album from nine years later.
Right off the bat with opening track “Martyr”, we’ve got Burton C. Bell’s switching from guttural growls to melodic vocals at the drop of a hat, an aspect I really dug with other tracks on the album as well like “Scapegoat” and “Scumgrief”. I didn’t peg the band as a death metal outfit until hearing Soul of a New Machine, and it’s really just with this album that I would have even considered calling them that, a rather unexpected but nice surprise. Guitarist Dino Cazares’ riffing on this album showed great variety while remaining brutally heavy in each context, with his tight picking on the main riff of “Leechmaster”, the great majority of his parts in “Flesh Hold”, and more atmospheric and hypnotic passages like the intro of “Escape Confusion” among those of note, with Raymond Herrera’s drumming holding them all together with machine-like precision. The album also marked some of the first uses of samples in great volume that I’d hear in metal, having become familiar with the concept through how it is done in hip-hop. One notable example would be the use of the “This Is My Rifle” prayer from Full Metal Jacket finding a home in “Crisis”, though I’ll leave it up to you to have fun in spotting some of the others.
I credit Soul of a New Machine for leading me towards one of the most-consistent extreme metal bands out there in grindcore/death metal pioneers Napalm Death. And the thing I find most amusing about that is that while Napalm Death were undoubtedly an influence on Fear Factory, I can’t help but wonder if the influence eventually shifted directions when I listen to their albums from the mid-to-late-’90s like Fear, Emptiness, Despair and Diatribes. I realize there are other industrial influences over that band as well and there’s the Godflesh connection through Napalm Death’s ex-guitarist Justin Broadrick, so it’s more likely a crossover and sharing of inspiration (I’m thinking bands like Swans and Killing Joke) that led to some similarities in sound.
Years later I could also point to the Fear Factory sound drawing me towards Meshuggah more so than Sepultura did for their heavy sense of groove and Voivod for blending my science fiction interest with music in terms of the lyrics and the imagery.
Death – The Sound of Perseverance
My journey towards this album started with an advertisement. While buying music magazines in high school, my brother and I would frequently see the promotion of Death’s Live In L.A. CD and DVD. The band looked extremely cool, rocking long hair in an era where it wasn’t fashionable in an ad that also mentioned proceeds would go towards medical expenses for their guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Chuck Schuldiner as he fought a brain tumor. Unfortunately, Chuck would pass away in 2001, but even before we had heard a note from his band they had left an impression on us.
This album, The Sound of Perseverance, was not mine. I took a gamble on behalf of my brother, and gifted the album to him on Christmas in 2003 (I did buy myself a copy eventually). It paid off! I think it was around this time (or slightly after) that he’d downloaded the music video for “The Philosopher” from their Individual Thought Patterns album, and I had hoped that the quality of the one Death album I was able to find was comparable.
What was my initial reaction to this album? It was surprisingly accessible to me. It shared enough in common with some of the more mainstream thrash metal bands I was familiar with in that I was not really phased too much by Chuck’s vocals and could sink my teeth right into the songs. Regarding his vocals, they had shifted to a higher-pitched wail than those familiar with Death were accustomed to, possibly as it had been the longest gap between albums in the band’s career (roughly three and a half years since their previous album Symbolic was released), but they are still very much an appropriate fit. The album also stands out for its sharp and clean production, with Jim Morris heading the sessions, and his mix managed to pull it all apart, with all the instrumental contributions to the sound audible to this then-young musician ears. I think it’s the best-sounding of their studio albums in that regard. It can be a difficult balancing act in metal, particularly when it comes to the bass.
Even if you’re not into heavier music, you can still take much away from them for their musicianship alone, whom Chuck employed in high quantity in particular starting with the Human album, most notably from a drumming perspective. Sean Reinert and Gene Hoglan from earlier lineups may be bigger names in the drum community, but Richard Christy (later gaining more fame for his work on The Howard Stern Show) shines brightly here on what would be the band’s last studio album. From the top of the album, “Scavenger of Human Sorrow” makes Christy’s name much like “Painkiller” did when Scott Travis debuted on a Judas Priest album (a fitting comparison given Perseverance closes with a cover of “Painkiller”).
This album is a challenge to pick a favourite on as it’s so consistent. Ask me today and I’ll tell you “Spirit Crusher”, and tomorrow “Flesh and the Power It Holds”, “To Forgive Is To Suffer”, or the aforementioned “Scavenger”. If the vocal style is too much for you, aside from skipping to the instrumental track “Voice of the Soul”, I’d recommend checking out Chuck’s work with Control Denied. The Fragile Art of Existence shares much in common with the final Death album, from most of the musicians to the production team, and a good portion of the music I could see fitting on The Sound of Perseverance and vice versa. The Sound of Perseverance pulled me in a similar direction of technical metal that Arise did, but I’ll add groups like Atheist and Akercocke into the mix as to ones that my interest in Death ultimately drew me towards.
Opeth – Blackwater Park
By today’s standard, Opeth aren’t very extreme at all. In fact, vocalist Mikael Akerfeldt no longer uses growled vocals on their studio albums. Still, they exist on Blackwater Park, the album that got me on board as a fan through their contrasting of light and heavy. The idea that you can do a song like “Harvest” on the same album as “The Leper Affinity” and “The Funeral Portrait” was a foreign concept to me. And pretty much all of the non “Harvest” tracks, such as the album-closing title track, display significant evidence to varying degrees of that light/heavy balance within a twist-taking single composition.
I first learned of Opeth when they had a feature article in an issue of Guitar World around the time of this album’s release (though it was possibly in promotion of Deliverance or Damnation), and from their we soon downloaded a song of theirs out of curiousity via our rickety and archaic dial-up internet, the title track of Deliverance. What an epic that song is! We’d never heard anything quite like it. It tested our patience at over thirteen minutes in length, but we were soon hooked. From that experience, we then purchased whatever the music shops in the mall had available. In our cases, it was Blackwater Park for me, and my brother bought their Lamentations DVD around the same time. While I love the album as a total package, the first half of the album in particular really stuck with me, cemented into me in part by watching that concert DVD several times, which featured three songs from this 2001 album.
I knew that there was a thing called progressive metal, with your Dream Theaters, Fates Warnings, etc., but while most of these bands were drawing on prog-rock influences like Rush and Yes, Opeth were citing many, many other less-obvious Seventies artists such as Camel. Even this album’s title was lifted from a German progressive rock band of the same name. Add to that their brutal death metal sound influenced by the likes of Death and Morbid Angel, and they crafted a sound that continues to spark the interest of both metal and non-metal fans.
Once I’d absorbed Opeth and Blackwater Park as sounds that I thoroughly enjoyed exploring, the band would become a tastemaker for me, leading the growth my music collection as a whole away from metal. The first group I thank Opeth for introducing me to is progressive rock act Porcupine Tree, whose leading member Steven Wilson produced this album and lent his vocals to “Bleak”. I could also say that they opened my mind up to a world of acoustic music that I’d yet to explore as I went down the prog rabbit hole, with Opeth doing a decidedly non-metal album with 2003’s Damnation. I couldn’t say how my journey towards artists like Pentangle or Fairport Convention would have happened had I not heard Opeth first.
Emperor – Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk
I can still say that I don’t have the greatest of depth in knowledge and exposure in terms of listening to black metal, and I cannot remember where exactly in the chronology of my life this discovery fits in as I have no vivid memories of when I bought it. All of the above albums came before Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk, so I estimate I would have been around 19 when I grabbed a copy at the nearby CD Plus. My brother had bought Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire & Demise not too much earlier than my purchase of Anthems, but I rarely heard it since we’d often listen to music on our headphones rather than aloud, particularly as we began to delve into the type of metal that would become a nuisance to our parents when played aloud. Will Smith was right that parents just don’t understand!
Church burnings and some of the more notorious murderers that happened to be in black metal bands possibly set off some alarm bells regarding the ethics of these bands initially, but I don’t believe I was deterred for long. Conversely, I don’t think my intent of wanting to get into black metal was out of any rebel streak within me. I just hadn’t found the right black metal band when I was in high school, and past that point I cared less about what others would think of me if I listened to certain types of music. Emperor, in addition to Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth, were among the bigger names that seemed like logical starting points. While the latter two bands are good in their own right, I personally got more out of Emperor.
You’ve got “Alsbathr (The Oath)”, an incredibly epic, almost operatic-like overture to kick off the album, and while things got significantly more harsh as it bled into “Ye Entrancemperium” with it’s fantastic riffing (co-credited to Euronymous of Mayhem), much of the darkened melody still remained. The keyboards sounded a bit too grandiose at times upon initial listens of the album, but they in fact mesh well as a counter-melody to what the guitars are playing. Much of what turned me onto Opeth is what linked me to Emperpor. Both Ihsahn and Akerfeldt of Opeth are very capable of building dynamically intriguing albums from start to finish. Emperor was unquestionably extreme at this stage in their career, but would gradually transition towards the darker progressive metal style that Ihsahn would thrive in with his solo albums (they were nearly there with Prometheus). Regarding Ihsahn’s vocals, he didn’t have a voice that was terribly accessible (at least not yet), but switching vocal styles mid-song did appeal to me, not too different from how King Diamond uses his voice to portray different characters. Ihsahn uses a bit of that throughout, imitating both angelic choir and various demonic forms in tracks like “Ensorcelled by Khaos”, and his double-tracking of vocals in “With Strength I Burn” that lead into the spoken passages are also of particular note. I wasn’t used to the rhythmic idiosyncrasies of black metal drumming either, and Trym deserves much credit in keeping such a chaotic and unrelenting pace in a song like “The Loss and Curse of Reverence”.
The next natural step forward for me was to find other similar black metal acts. Anthems soon led me to the fact that Emperor shared a split album in their early days with Enslaved, a band that perhaps developed to even greater effect as one with a foot in the progressive rock door. As an album that is dense with the rapid-picking guitars and pummeling drumbeats, I could also say that had the type of music on Anthems not taken to me, I’d be missing out on other dissonant extreme metal acts such as Ulcerate and Gorguts, or something like Dodecahedron if sticking with black metal.
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Well, that’s that! Plenty of my favourite albums were left off this starter’s pack, but I feel it best represents a good sampling of artists that opened my mind about things on the more extreme side of metal.
For anyone else who was bit by the extreme metal bug, what were some of the albums and artists that grew your own interests?
Armchair Maestro 