For the last half of our weirdo metal exploration, we’re going to leave the avant-black metal scene in Scandinavia and head all over the world for avant-death and avant-grind bands.
A very quick discussion of “black metal,” “death metal,” and “grindcore” is probably in order. There are differences in sounds, lyrical approaches, and historical origins of each macro-style. If a person wants to dive deeply into these distinctions, the following is pretty oversimplified, but hopefully this will be a helpful level of information to help folks who are just getting into these kinds of “extreme music” styles.
Death Metal
Musically, death metal grew out of more “traditional” metal music genres, particularly thrash. The lyrics and associated imagery tend to deal with morbid/graphic/deathy stuff. Vocals are generally “death grunts,” snarled or grunted yelling at a relatively low pitch range. Being closer to traditional metal’s evolution, these bands are generally highly technically proficient musicians, and you’ll likely hear a lot of guitar soloing on most death metal records. This music started to form into a “proper” subgenre in the mid 80s, with quite a lot of bands working in the style by the late 80s and early 90s.