Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. It typically employs heavily distorted and low-tuned guitars, played with techniques such as palm muting and tremolo picking; deep growling vocals; aggressive, powerful drumming, featuring double kick and blast beat techniques; minor keys or atonality; abrupt tempo, key, and time signature changes; and chromatic chord progressions. The lyrical themes of death metal may include slasher film-style violence, political conflict, religion, nature, philosophy, true crime and science fiction.
Warrior Soul is an American rock band, formed by lead singer and producer Kory Clarke. Clarke started the band on a bet from a promoter at New York City's Pyramid Club, after a solo performance art show called "Kory Clarke/Warrior Soul". Clarke was determined he would have the best band in the city within six months. Nine months later he signed a multi-album deal with Geffen Records.
Elements is the third studio album released by American technical death metal band Atheist. It was released on August 30, 1993, by Music for Nations in Europe and by Metal Blade Records in the US. Elements was reissued by Relapse Records in 2005 and was digitally remastered with the addition of six bonus tracks.
Ensiferum is a Finnish folk metal band from Helsinki. The members of the band label themselves as "melodic folk metal".
Alchemist was an Australian progressive metal band from Canberra whose style combined death metal, progressive rock, psychedelic, Eastern, Aboriginal and electronic influences. The band formed in 1987 and released six studio albums, an EP and a compilation album. Work began on a new EP in 2010 but the band went on an indefinite hiatus and then split up. They are the only group to appear at every Metal for the Brain festival, an event they ran and organised from 1996. Alchemist also played at the Big Day Out and toured Europe several times.
Disembowelment, often styled as diSEMBOWELMENT, were an Australian death-doom band that formed in November 1989 featuring Renato Gallina on guitar and vocals, and Paul Mazziotta on drums. In early 1991 Jason Kells joined on lead guitar and at the end of that year the group's line-up was completed by Matthew Skarajew on bass guitar. In 1992 they issued an extended play, Dusk, on Relapse Records and followed with a studio album, Transcendence into the Peripheral, in 1993. They disbanded shortly thereafter – never having performed live. AllMusic's Eduardo Rivadavia described them as "[s]till revered in underground circles as doom-grind pioneers ... [their works] remain genre classics".
Virgin Black is an Australian symphonic gothic and doom metal band. The band was signed to The End Records and Germany's Massacre Records, through which it released four albums and one EP. A fifth album, originally planned for release in 2006, was released independently in 2018. As of 2021, they are signed to Australian record label, Dark Escapes Music. Formed in 1995 in Adelaide, they have achieved international acclaim during their career, receiving praise from such magazines as Orkus, Metal Hammer, Legacy and The Village Voice.
Projects in the Jungle is the second studio album by American heavy metal band Pantera, released on July 27, 1984 through Metal Magic Records.
Nightingale is a Swedish rock band from Örebro.
Blood Fire Death is the fourth studio album by Swedish extreme metal band Bathory. It was released on 8 October 1988, through Music for Nations sublabel, Under One Flag. The album, although mostly black metal, includes some of the first examples of Viking metal. According to the book Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult by Dayal Patterson, Blood Fire Death began a second trilogy, an era Quorthon described as the "pre-Christian Swedish Viking Era".
Alice in Hell is the debut studio album by Canadian thrash metal band Annihilator, released on April 17, 1989 through Roadrunner Records. This was the only Annihilator album for ten years to feature Randy Rampage on vocals, until he returned for their seventh studio album Criteria for a Black Widow (1999).
Saxon is the debut studio album by English heavy metal band Saxon, released in 1979.
Austral Alien is the fifth full-length studio album by the Australian progressive metal band Alchemist. It was recorded and mixed in only ten days. It was released in 2003 by Chatterbox Records in Australia and worldwide by Relapse Records. Austral Alien is semi-conceptual with a lyrical focus inspired by the Australian environment and the impact of man on the ecology. Promotional music videos for the songs "First Contact", "Solarburn" and "Alpha Capella Nova Vega" were released, with the video for "Solarburn" expressing the album's concept, using imagery from the 2003 Canberra bushfires. The cover art is influenced by Surrealism. Austral Alien featured more keyboards and a mellowing of their previous death metal guitar sound, with even shorter songs than Organasm. Allmusic suggested that "Austral Alien is for Alchemist what, say, Permanent Waves was to Rush : a work of unquestionable merit and maturity that may nevertheless leave older fans yearning just a little for the excesses – both successful and not – of albums past" and noted that this was the band's most commercially accessible release, while still praising Alchemist for their "inspired brand of sci-fi metal".
Eve of the War is a six-track extended play from the Australian progressive metal band Alchemist. The EP was released by Shock Records through its subsidiary label Thrust in 1998/1999. The title track, "Eve of the War" is a cover version of the opening piece from the British 1978 album, Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. The EP has two live songs: "Yoni Kunda" first released on Lunasphere, and "Chinese Whispers" from Spiritech. The other tracks are a remix of "Yoni Kunda", and two re-mastered tracks from Jar of Kingdom. A music video of the title track was provided.
Spiritech is the third full-length studio album by the Australian progressive metal band Alchemist. It was released in 1997 by Australian label Thrust and distributed by Shock Records. A promotional music video for the song "Road to Ubar" was released. "Spiritechnology" samples Ronald Reagan speaking on extraterrestrial life and its possible effect on religion, while "Chinese Whispers" has become popular at live shows. The album has received very positive reviews, with Eduardo Rivadavia from Allmusic suggesting it is "possibly the greatest space metal album since Voivod's landmark Nothingface, adding that Alchemist "meshed [death metal] seamlessly with progressive rock, psychedelia, Middle Eastern nuances, and even native Australian aboriginal music". The album's lyrics tend to explore the relationship between human technology and its impact on nature, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
Lunasphere is the second full-length album by the Australian progressive metal band Alchemist, and the first of their albums to be released by Shock Records through its metal subsidiary Thrust, in 1995. Eduardo Rivadavia of Allmusic described Lunasphere as "Like a doorway into another dimension, the Aussie group's wildly experimental songs often stand on the knife edge between control and chaos, between reason and insanity, and are capable of melding wickedly crushing heavy metal riffing with surprisingly gentle moments of quiet introspection". All of this album's tracks later appeared on the Embryonics compilation, except the instrumental fragment "Luminous". A live version of "Yoni Kunda" was used on the "Eve of the War" EP. An alternate live version of both this track and "Closed Chapter" were also included on Embryonics. "Luminous" and "Garden of Eroticism" were used in the soundtrack to a 2010 episode of the TV show Bondi Rescue.
Jar of Kingdom is the debut album by Australian progressive metal band Alchemist. The band recorded the album after receiving a record contract in the mail from Austrian label Lethal Records and was released by that company in October 1993. During the recording of the first track "Abstraction", vocalist Adam Agius damaged his voice, thus resulting in the raw vocal sound on the rest of the album. The name "Jar of Kingdom" was inspired by a comment by television personality and entertainer Graham Kennedy during a comedy skit, in which he described a vial of pig semen as a "jar of kingdom". Jar of Kingdom featured early experiments with synthesisers, acoustic guitars and samples: "Whale" includes the sample of a humpback whale song. All tracks from this album except "Wandering and Wondering" and "Whale" later appeared on the Embryonics compilation.
Embryonics is a double-CD compilation of tracks by the Australian progressive metal band Alchemist. It was released in 2005 in Australia by Chatterbox Records and worldwide by Relapse Records. The album features 28 tracks recorded by the band between 1990 and 1998 including eight songs from the album Jar of Kingdom, eight from Lunasphere and five from Spiritech along with a cover of "Eve of the War" from Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds that was the title track from EP Eve of the War that is now deleted. The live version of "Chinese Whispers" is also from that EP; the other live tracks were recorded in 1995 at the studios of Triple J for an episode of Three Hours of Power and are exclusive to this release. "Paisley Bieurr" and "Imagination Flower" are early demo tracks.
Tripsis is the sixth and final full-length studio album by the Australian progressive metal band Alchemist. Recorded in 2007, Adam Agius stated that the songwriting focused on a consistently heavy approach. A promotional music video for the song "Wrapped in Guilt" was planned. A music video for "Tongues and Knives" premiered on 8 October 2008.
Wuthering Heights is a Danish-Swedish heavy metal band with a somewhat eclectic musical style which falls in somewhere between progressive metal, "folk music-into-heavy metal" and power metal, along with "a mixture of Neoclassical Metal, Melodic Speed Metal and various progressive elements."
