Old school death metal, from the outside in. Each step is a genre and the single record this encyclopedia would put on first. Play them in this order and the last one should sound like a next step rather than a wall.
- 1 The way in
Heavy metal 1970
It split off from hard rock and blues rock when Black Sabbath tuned down and wrote riffs on the tritone. Volume, riff and a code of its own - every branch below starts here.
Sung. Melodic singing throughout.
Put on
Black Sabbath - the song Black Sabbath. The first thirty seconds are the genre's birth certificate.
Black Sabbath, Black Sabbath (1970) - 2 Then
Death metal 1985
Guttural vocals, low tunings, blast beats and tremolo picking. Thrash pushed past the limit of legibility, with two founding schools: Florida and Stockholm.
Growled or shrieked. Unintelligible without a lyric sheet. The thing most newcomers bounce off.
Put on
Entombed - Left Hand Path. The first twenty seconds explain the entire Swedish sound.
Entombed, Left Hand Path (1990) - 3 What you asked about
Old school death metal 1989
The sound of the first wave: either the Swedish HM-2 buzzsaw or the cavernous American murk, with no showy technicality.
Growled or shrieked. Unintelligible without a lyric sheet. The thing most newcomers bounce off.
Put on
Autopsy - Mental Funeral. Death metal that crawls rather than runs.
Autopsy, Mental Funeral (1991) - 4 Where to go next
Second wave 1991
The Norwegian scene that fixed the definitive sound: thin guitars, demo-tape production as an ideal, corpse paint.
Growled or shrieked. Unintelligible without a lyric sheet. The thing most newcomers bounce off.
Put on
Immortal - Pure Holocaust. The scene's best album without the troubling baggage.
Immortal, Pure Holocaust (1993)
Assembled from the tree: every genre Old school death metal descends from, in order. Old school death metal has no subgenres, so the last step is the genre that rates closest to it by sound.