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.
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the United Kingdom and United States. With roots in blues rock, psychedelic rock and acid rock, heavy metal bands developed a thick, monumental sound characterized by distorted guitars, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats and loudness.
Doom metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music that typically uses slower tempos, low-tuned guitars and a much "thicker" or "heavier" sound than other heavy metal genres. Both the music and the lyrics are intended to evoke a sense of despair, dread, and impending doom. The genre is strongly influenced by the early work of Black Sabbath, who formed a prototype for doom metal. During the first half of the 1980s, a number of bands such as Witchfinder General and Pagan Altar from England, American bands Pentagram, Saint Vitus, the Obsessed, Trouble, and Cirith Ungol, and Swedish band Candlemass defined doom metal as a distinct genre. Pentagram, Saint Vitus, Trouble and Candlemass have been referred to as "the Big Four of Doom Metal".
Power metal is a subgenre of heavy metal combining characteristics of traditional heavy metal with speed metal, often within a symphonic context. Generally, power metal is characterized by a faster, lighter, and more uplifting sound, in contrast with the heaviness and dissonance prevalent in, for example, extreme metal. Power metal bands usually have anthemic songs with fantasy-based subject matter and strong choruses, thus creating a theatrical, dramatic and emotionally "powerful" sound.
A number of heavy metal genres have developed since the emergence of heavy metal during the late 1960s and early 1970s. At times, heavy metal genres may overlap or are difficult to distinguish, but they can be identified by a number of traits. They may differ in terms of instrumentation, tempo, song structure, vocal style, lyrics, guitar playing style, drumming style, and so on.
Ensiferum is a Finnish folk metal band from Helsinki. The members of the band label themselves as "melodic folk metal".
Wintersun is a Finnish heavy metal band from Helsinki originally formed as the side project of Jari Mäenpää, then-vocalist and guitarist of folk metal band Ensiferum.
Symphonic metal is a cross-generic style designation for the symphonic subsets of heavy metal music subgenres. It is used to denote any metal band that makes use of symphonic or orchestral elements. The style features the heavy drums and guitars of metal with different elements of orchestral classical music, such as symphonic instruments, choirs and sometimes a full orchestra, or just keyboard orchestration.
Leaves' Eyes is a symphonic metal band from Germany and Norway. They were formed in 2003 by Liv Kristine, formerly the lead singer of Theatre of Tragedy, and the entire line-up of Atrocity. To date, the band has released eight studio albums, a single, six EPs, one live album and a DVD.
Rage is a German heavy metal band formed in 1984 by Peter "Peavy" Wagner. They were part of the German heavy/speed/power metal scene which emerged in the early to mid-1980s, and have been referred to as one of the country's so-called "big four" of power metal, along with Grave Digger, Helloween and Running Wild.
Anorexia Nervosa is a French symphonic black metal band from Limoges, formed in 1991. They are currently "on hold" due to the departure of vocalist RMS Hreidmarr.
Tales from the Thousand Lakes is the second studio album by Finnish heavy metal band Amorphis. It is a concept album based on the Finnish national epic, Kalevala.
Hibernus Mortis is a band started in December, 1995 by Cesar Placeres and Ralf Varela. The band took its name from the ancient Latin translation for "Dead Winter". Starting out, the South Florida band's primary goal was to create some of the most crushing and extreme music ever recorded. Taking influence from a variety of sources, the band took musical inspiration from old-school death metal bands like Incantation, Autopsy, Morbid Angel, Death, Dismember, Immolation, Entombed, Obituary, Vader and Suffocation just to name a few.
Destroy Destroy Destroy is an American melodic death metal band formed in Murfreesboro, Tennessee in February 2003. With a lineup of rhythm guitarist Jeremiah Scott, vocalist Bryan Kemp, and drummer Andrew Hall, they began writing songs; soon thereafter Destroy Destroy Destroy completed their outfit with lead guitarist Way Barrier, bassist Adam Phillips and keyboardist Brian Shorter. The group then started playing shows locally and recorded a self-financed EP entitled Kill or Be Killed. They have released two studio albums, Devour the Power (2006) and Battle Sluts (2009), both through Black Market Activities. Destroy Destroy Destroy played their first show in a pizzeria as opening band for Mastodon.
Luna Mortis, formerly The Ottoman Empire, was an American heavy metal band based in Madison, Wisconsin.
Lullabies for the Dormant Mind is the second studio album by Canadian metal band The Agonist. It was produced by Christian R. Donaldson. The album demonstrates a more diverse sound than the Agonist's debut album and features classical, jazz, opera, grindcore, thrash metal, and black metal influences. It features guest violins by Avi Ludmer and orchestrations by classical pianists Melina Soochan and Jonathan Lefrancois-Leduc (Blackguard). In 2009 the band released two videos from the album, "...And Their Eulogies Sang Me to Sleep" and "Thank You, Pain".
Blackguard is a Canadian melodic death metal band from Montréal, Québec, previously known as Profugus Mortis.
Firefight is the third album by Canadian melodic death metal band Blackguard, due on March 29, 2011, via Victory Records. Unlike its predecessor, this album contains elements of power metal and symphonic metal based on the band's melodic death metal root, much like in Children of Bodom's vein.
Alissa White-Gluz is a Canadian singer, best known as the lead vocalist of the Swedish melodic death metal band Arch Enemy, and former lead vocalist and founding member of the Canadian metalcore band the Agonist. Her vocal style includes both growling and clean vocals (singing). Although primarily associated with melodic death metal and metalcore, she has appeared as a guest vocalist for power metal, symphonic metal and deathcore bands, notably Kamelot, Delain, Carnifex and Powerwolf, and has performed live with Nightwish and Tarja Turunen.
Florida death metal is a regional scene and stylistic subdivision of death metal. Some of the most significantly pioneering and best-selling death metal acts emerged in Florida, especially in the Tampa Bay area. As a result, Tampa is unofficially known by many death metal fans as the "capital of death metal." The scene coalesced in the mid-1980s through early 1990s around the output of bands such as Death, Nasty Savage, Deicide, Monstrosity, Morbid Angel, Atheist, Obituary, and others. The producer Scott Burns and the studio Morrisound Recording were also instrumental in developing and popularizing the Florida scene. Some bands which originated outside of Florida, such as Malevolent Creation and Cannibal Corpse, relocated to the state in order to participate in this burgeoning scene. The Florida bands featured a more technical approach to the evolving death metal sound, a style which spread beyond the confines of the state, and some were instrumental in creating the progressive death metal subgenre. The death metal genre as a whole, including the Florida scene, declined in popularity in the second half of the 1990s, but many bands within the Florida scene persisted and the scene resurged in popularity in subsequent decades. Although the scene attracted more media attention, it continued to be underground due to its extreme nature.
