How to Appreciate Death Metal

While most people associate death metal music with a bunch of guys grunting and slapping detuned guitars randomly, there's a multitude of reasons why this genre maintains a strong following and earns the fierce loyalty of many listeners worldwide. If you're curious about death metal, here's you're chance to learn, appreciate, listen, and enjoy.

Death Metal is total ownage!

1. Learn about the history and characteristics of death metal. I bet that it’s more interesting and complex than you thought. Also, learn about all the stereotypes of death metal music and its fans and why they aren't true at all. They are not all lazy, Satan-worshipping, animal-sacrificing psychos. They are actually normal people with family, friends and complex off-stage personalities, with the exception of maybe Glen Benton (from Deicide).
2. Listen beyond the crunching guitars and harsh singing. Although the rough guitar sound and grating vocals permeate all of death metal, it can take a little getting used to, especially if your ears are accustomed to softer sounds. Believe it or not, it's more than just noise...There are melodies, patterns, and complexities to be appreciated if you listen attentively enough.
3. If you really don’t understand the harsh death grunts, don’t be afraid to look at them on a lyrics website. Two great lyrics websites are metal-archives.com and darklyrics.com. You might be surprised by the complexity and large vocabulary of some of the lyrics. And it's also worth noting that if you like music that rhymes on every line you might not like Death Metal that much because a lot of Death Metal musicians don't use this technique.
4. Realize that playing and singing death metal requires enormous practice and skill. Even bass players, who don't do the complex leads and melodies associated with death metal guitar, cite to have practiced one piece of music for at least a full year just for a mere audition.
5. Watch a live death metal performance. Even if it's on a TV screen, observe how the group members manipulate the instruments. If you've ever tried to play those instruments yourself, you'll probably be amazed with how skillfully they play. It takes practice, and dedication, which challenges the stereotype of metalheads being lazy and careless. You might also be surprised about how energetic some of the performers are.
6. Remember that in death metal, unlike many other genres, each band almost always writes their own music. That includes the riffs, drums, solos, and lyrics. Writing your own music demonstrates another dimension of instrumental mastery and talent, as well as making the music more personal and less manufactured.
7. Understand the context and subject matter. Death metal lyrics and themes, while not to be taken seriously, celebrate the outer extremes of human experience, such as the motivations of serial killers, gore, death itself, and isolation. Death metal is less about generic anger and more about empathy for people who suffer from despair, isolation, and who possess an acute sense of unfair ostracism from society. Also, many bands will cover other topics not usually associated with death, such as mythology, religion, society, and even love. The fact that death metal musicians aren’t afraid to talk about anything from ANY point of view in their music lyrics is probably the main reason that many people avoid death metal. And NOTE: Very few Death Metal bands have Satanic/Anti-Christian lyrics, but they’re just the ones that get all the attention from the media. And if you’re seriously against that kind of stuff, Cradle of Filth, Deicide and Immolation are all bands to avoid. And use this rule for death metal lyrics: The more over-the-top and extreme they are, the less seriously you should take them.
8. Know the sub-genres. Not all death metal is the same. The genre contains many sub-genres that can frequently mix and intermingle with each other. As a result, it may be difficult to ascribe a band under a single sub-genre. Here's a general guideline to get you started:
• Blackened: Akercocke, Behemoth, Belphegor, Dissection, God Dethroned, Sacramentum, Zyklon
• Brutal: Aborted, Blood Red Throne, Cannibal Corpse, Deeds of Flesh, Deicide, Deranged, Disavowed, Disgorge, Hate Eternal, Immolation, Krisiun, Nile, Skinless, Spawn of Possession, Suffocation, Visceral Bleeding and Wormed.
• Old School: Autopsy, Death, Entombed, Morbid Angel, Obituary, Possessed, Deicide, Benediction, Pestilence
• Deathcore: The Black Dahlia Murder, Despised Icon, As Blood Runs Black
• Goregrind: Terminally Your Aborted Ghost, Anal Bleeding, Guttural Engorgement, XXX Maniak
• Grindcore: Dying Fetus, Phobia, Napalm Death, Rotten Sound, Terrorizer.
• Melodic: Arch Enemy, At Odds with God, At the Gates, Carcass (Later), Dark Tranquility, In Flames, Dismember, Dissection (old), Hypocrisy, Sacrilege, Soilwork, Wintersun.
• Progressive: Akercocke, Amorphis (Early), Atheist, Becoming the Archetype, Cynic, Death, Edge of Sanity, Nocturnus, Opeth, Pestilence (Later Releases), Quo Vadis, Sadist, The Faceless
• Slam: Devourment, Dying Fetus, Internal Bleeding, Soils of Fate.
• Technical: Atheist, Beneath The Massacre, Cryptopsy, Cynic, Death, Decapitated, Gorguts, Immolation, Necrophagist, Nile, Ominous, Origin, Pestilence, Suffocation, Visceral Bleeding.
9. Respect the artists. The greatest death metalists almost can't make a living with what they do, and yet the musicians in these bands continue to soldier on in spite of their obscurity. And with the fact that death metal is so non-mainstream proves that death metal musicians have to work incredibly hard for all their combined recordings to sell even 1 Million copies (Which less than 6 death metal musicians have actually done.)

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