Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Death Metal vs Black Metal

Death Metal and Black Metal are quite often confused.  I don't know how, but it often is.

Death Metal originated as an extreme version of thrash metal.  The genre was pioneered by bands such as Death, Possessed, Venom etc.

Black Metal was originally created as a reaction to death metal.  The musicians thought Death metal was becoming too commercial (which is funny, because it was and still is often too extreme for casual music listeners).  It was the second wave of black metal when the genre began to really take shape.  Bands such as Mayhem, Burzum, Immortal and other early 90s Norwegian metal bands were the main pioneers.

The main audible difference is in the vocals.  Whilst Death Metal features the trademarked death "Growl", the vocals in Black Metal are more varied.  Some vocals are whispered, some shouted, some screamed, some growled.

Another difference is the lyric themes.  The deceased guitarist for Mayhem, Euronymous, stated that black metal is only black metal if it is satanic.  This is not really true anymore, but a lot of early black metal bands were satanists.  Usually, black metal has religious themes in it, whether it is pagan, christian (though christian themes are extremely rare) and, of course, satanist.  Death metal's themes are a bit more wide ranging.

Death metal has branched out a lot more than black metal.  Under death metal's umbrella is melodic death metal, Gothenburg death metal (from Sweden, pretty awesome) and deathcore (controversially though), though that list is not definitive.  Black metal has spawned . . .  more black metal.

Some cool death metal bands:
DEATH (my personal favourite)
Children of Bodom (melodic death metal)
In Flames (Gothenburg death metal)
Possessed (a pioneer)

Some cool black metal bands:
Burzum (my favourite for some reason, though no live shows because it is a one man band.  The one man was in jail for 19 years for killing Euronymous, the guitarist mentioned above)
Mayhem (one of the best known pioneers)
Primordial (a newer band, pretty good, but newer stuff is less black metal)

A typical (sort of) death metal song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbp60IX_jFQ

A typical black metal song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EA_8vJO0NM

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