FRIDAY MANIA: The roots of death metal

A couple weeks back I wrote a post about Venom Inc. and mentioned about Venom being coined one of the pioneers of the black/speed metal genre, as most listeners of the genre know and routinely debate. This week I am going to shift gears a bit and talk about the roots of death metal, including a few bands that are currently on the Speed Clothes roster.

When we discuss the roots of death metal and who the first bands in the genre were, you have to first consider some of the bands who influenced the genre, and not surprising the first wave of black metal actually did influence the genre along with thrash metal as well. Bands such as Venom. Slayer, and Kreator were largely apart of influencing the creation of death metal.

POSSESSED - DEATH METAL

The first wave of death metal gave birth to some very important albums, including POSSESSED "Seven Churches" which included the appropriately named song "Death Metal." This album definitely rides on the thrash metal sound with the addition of guttural vocals and much more extreme themes in Satanism, Occultism, Anti-Christianity, Murder, and Death. Possessed are originally from California just like the top four thrash bands who had emerged only a few years before. You can purchase Possessed leggings HERE!

DEATH - SCREAM BLOODY GORE

Now let's switch our focus to Florida where another band was emerging in the early-mid 80's death metal scene. DEATH is one of the most well known death metal bands to this day. Their guitarist, Chuck Schuldiner is considered by many as the originator of extreme metal. Sadly, Chuck passed away in 2001 from brain cancer.

SLAUGHTER - DISINTEGRATOR/INCINERATOR

Since I have mentioned Death, I'd like to also mention another band who Chuck briefly played with. Canadian thrash/death metal band SLAUGHTER is regarded as an early death metal band in the Canadian scene. Slaughter were quite raw and had the rabid energy that was more like punks and thrashers than the other Slaughter.. let's not go there! Canadian Slaughter had a real FUCK YOU attitude!

DISMEMBER - SKIN HER ALIVE

Switching to the European scene, Sweden is known for many bands in the death metal genre. One of the pioneering bands of the Swedish Death Metal scenes is DISMEMBER. Their first album released in 1991 entitled "Like an Ever Flowing Stream" is considered one of the burgeoning albums for Swedish Death Metal. It caused particular controversy over the song "Skin Her Alive". You can pre-order leggings featuring the artwork from that album HERE!

BOLT THROWER - CENOTAPH

Let's jump to UK to give a shout out to BOLT THROWER. This is death metal at its finest. I was fortunate enough to see them live for their exclusive headlining set in London, Ontario just last year about a month before their drummer Martin "Kiddie" Kearns passed away suddenly in his sleep. Bolt Thrower split-up about a year after his death.

MORBID ANGEL - ALTARS OF MADNESS

I suppose a blog about early death metal wouldn't be complete without the next couple of bands. MORBID ANGEL have caught a lot of flack lately due to the change in their direction over the years. It is hard to deny their importance in the death metal realm though. Along with DEATH, Morbid Angel were a huge part of the Florida death metal scene. Undeniably Florida had one of the biggest death metal scenes in the 80s and early 90s, including Morbid Angel, OBITUARY, Death, and Deicide.