penningtron wrote: Fri Nov 10, 2023 8:16 am The really low growl vocals are a deal breaker for me, just can't take them seriously.

Yeah, the vocals, and overuse of double bass drum/pedal are also deal-breakers for me.

I like some doom metal, though.

There are a few things I like here and there. Not my fave style but wouldn't call it crap.

I have a nostalgic love for a lot of it but as a kid growing up in the country around a small town where I didn't have any friends that were into anything beyond hair/glam metal I had almost no resources (both financial or musical) to get exposed to more of it beyond the most well-known acts or what was sneaking into the metal show that played on the AOR station late on Sunday evenings. Working at KFC at $5 an hour didn't give me a lot of "play" money to spend on a record I didn't already know I was going to love and as hinted at above, the occasional metal dudes that worked at the record stores were absolute elitist twats who had zero time to help expose a young hesher to better bands.

I transitioned into a punk scene pretty quickly once I got the hell off the farm and that was a way better fit for me anyway both with my level of ability, my commitment, and my mindset...as well as a lot less rules and gatekeepers (which I know was not the experience for everyone as there has always been a lot of elitist punk kids too).

The music as Death Metal itself is not crap but any scene that holds some fucking elitist mentality about being metal enough or punk enough is absolutely stupid. It seems even more ridiculous as a grown-ass man how high-school it all was and still is in some circles. I am just waiting for this thread to devolve into what is or is not Death Metal which I'm guessing will be around page 4 or 5.

There's so much of it going back to the mid-80's, making it difficult to parse out what to look for. When I was a kid, the old NY and Florida bands still loomed large. I could never get into that super-technical shit.

I've liked everything I've heard from this band:

https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/vampire/3540351959

I like a little of it, and I sometimes wonder if the singer's voice is the singular factor. For instance, I only like Cannibal Corpse songs that Corpsegrinder sings on.

Recently, I've loved Black Breath's Sentenced to Life, and I liked some Brutal Truth and some Obituary that you guys posted about a while back.

But some groups like Carcass I just can't get into (yes, I realize they're more 'grindcore'). Same with most black metal (though I like some Deafheaven from time to time).

Is there any death metal band or the whole subgenre that is a lot more sloppy and not technical at all?

boilermaker wrote: Fri Nov 10, 2023 11:26 am Is there any death metal band or the whole subgenre that is a lot more sloppy and not technical at all?

Search for old school Swedish death metal.

boilermaker wrote: Fri Nov 10, 2023 11:26 am Is there any death metal band or the whole subgenre that is a lot more sloppy and not technical at all?

Check out Autopsy and their quite stunning (and doomy!) decond album "Mental funeral" (1991). Debut "Severed survival" (89) is bit more like EARLY/Thrashy Death but with more Doom *and* crust-punk in the mix; very organic and loose sounding too by the standards of the genre but I thinlk second album has more appeal on this forum.

Swedish death metal was indeed also more raw and punky; in addition to the big ones (=debuts by Entombed, Dismember and Grave; I never really liked Unleashed-go with Carnages sole album instead or even the rugged demo comp by Entombeds precursor Nihilist who practically "invented" the sedish sound), I can recommend the *great* EP by Utumno which was the only Sunlight studio production of the era with "real" drums (the others had d-drums); killer tunes as well. God Macabres "the winterlong" is another cool EP that mixed melancholy, doomy Candlemass riffs with VERY crust-punk type riffage and d-beats, many later "retro" acts would run the "crust with Entombed guitars" sound into the ground but here, it was still fresh and the long doom sections give it a special character.
Of course, local heroes Grotesque (=the precursor to At the gates though MUCH rawer and more chromatic/dissonant) and their EP "Incantation" (later reissued with bonus tracks as "in the embrace of evil") is mandatory; not at all typical swedeath, more like a mixture of early Morbid Angel and 80s brazillian deaththrash but still with that distinctly swedish catchiness

British band Bolt Throwers sole great album "in the realm of chaos" is both sloppy, heavy and awesome-shame about the stuff that followed.

Oh yeah, while Suffocation are primarily associated with very tight and clinical "brutal techdeath", I actually think their first EP "Human waste" fits the bill as well; awesome shit...

Oh yeah, CRAP (jokes, I lived for this shit back in 89-91 and still love the style. I'm even checking out newer bands on an at least monthly basis but honestly, I think the style peaked then for reasons mentioned in M.H.s post)

Edit: forgot to mention that Utumno and God Macabre shared the same vocalist/songwriter, hence why I mentioned them together...

Atrocity's "Hallucinations" and Sarcofago's "Laws of the Scourge" are two of the earliest tech-death albums. They're not as clinical and soulless as much of the later stuff.

Krev wrote: Fri Nov 10, 2023 12:50 pm Atrocity's "Hallucinations" and Sarcofago's "Laws of the Scourge" are two of the earliest tech-death albums. They're not as clinical and soulless as much of the later stuff.

Atrocity was an odd band; that album had the potential to be great but there's something very dry and unpleasant about the whole album; it was *definitely* ahead of its time though...

Other examples of more raw, sloppy and organic tech-death would be the sole EP by the other Grotesque spin-off Liers in wait "spiritually uncontrolled art" or whatever it was called; they were a total flop compared with At the Gates but I dug this EP quite a lot; they were playing stuff WAY above their abilities and it ended up very messy and chaotic but pretty cool too