This essay is in three parts, progressing from the worst stuff to the best. In some cases-like with Dysentery, Kraanium and Begging for Incest-bands made big improvements over their previous material and have even brighter futures. The newer material was the best material from the majority of the one hundred and twenty slamming death metal bands I surveyed.
While black metal reached its creative zenith in the late nineties and early oughts, many slamming death metal bands seem to be hitting their creative peak right now, which is very cool. The vocals are gurgling & squealing abstractions that almost function like keyboard in that they set a tone and color everything, but rarely convey intelligible lyrics or take the spotlight. Most slamming death metal bands I like have sounds that emphasize heaviness, simple riffs and lurching forward momentum. Still, the depth of the pocket in the best slamming death metal tunes goes way below the Earth’s core, and the emphasis on simple, rhythm-based riffs is a welcome development after all the technical (and heartless) showboating begat by computer bands like Decapitated, Necrophagist and Fleshgod Apocalypse. What I really like about slamming death metal is the deep pocket heaviness it achieves, something that’s been missing in most of the modern death metal bands I’ve followed-bands like Krisiun, Hate Eternal, Behemoth and Nile (though yes, a heavier headbanging approach can still be found in recent offerings by Horrendous, Asphyx, Necros Christos, Hail of Bullets, Slugathor, and the many retro acts like Hooded Menace). The stuff I’m interested in has mostly unintelligible vocals, rather than the hardcore/screamo approach of deathcore, which I find annoying or repellant, though certainly some of the riffs in slamming death metal may lean in this thugged-out direction, something that goes all the way back to the stomping death metal of Suffocation, Obituary, Entombed, Kataklysm and many others. There is certainly some confusion between slamming death metal and deathcore, which I don’t like. I’ve been exploring slamming brutal death metal, and although I previously knew of a handful of these bands, it was a sub-subgenre name and style with which I was mostly unfamiliar.