Excluding the more well known classics i've always had a soft spot with this Noumena album and it's sad, folk-like melodies: it's clear that they worship Elegy-era Amorphis, but they do it with a lot of taste. This song in particular has an incredible chorus melody and the build up to the little solo is exceptional

Man, I remember Vehemence. I saw them live in 2002 with Decapitated, Impaled, and Incantation.

Vehemence made a lasting impression on me for being terrible live. They had to stop and restart one of their songs twice. Not because of tech issues, because they kept fucking up. Laughable for a band who was on a “major” metal label at the time. Completely amateurish, I could never dream of taking them seriously afterwards.

On topic, Dark Tranquillity. That run through The Gallery through Character is impeccable.

The aforementioned Impaled could qualify, as they are essentially a Heartwork-era Carcass homage. All of their albums aside from The Last Gasp are excellent and worth a listen.

Scum - Purple Dreams and Magic Poems...one of the greatest melodic death metal albums to ever come out of Finland (or anywhere for that matter), rivaling classics like North From Here, Tales..., A Leftover, and Hatebreeder. These guys have a pretty unique, "heavy metal-esque" approach to the style, very mid-paced but no less catchy and powerful. The album is extremely rare and expensive but luckily I finally got my hands on a mint condition copy a few months back .

A few have already mentionned solid bands like Kalmah and Nightrage, and I'm going to double-down on this. Both bands have released worthwhile material in their later years, but both were absolutely at their best on their first few records.

For Kalmah, their first three records are absolutely essential, but their best IMHO, is Swampsong (which has a lower average score than the others on Metal Archives because one doofus gave it a 5% score, messing up the average score). The work between rhythm and lead guitars is what carries this album way ahead of almost everything that's ever been done in melodic death metal. But basically everything about this is amazing, including the keyboards and fantastic drumming. The first track, Heroes to Us is an instant classic, and I find myself playing the riffs in my head every other day, even 15 years after I heard it for the first time.



As for Nightrage, their first two albums are absolute classics of the genre. Their third album, A New Disease Is Born, is a good album, but it's a transition record. The band started to incorporate some of the most popular and cliché elements of the genre, and they also implemented clean vocals, which were almost completely absent of the first two records. If I had to pick a favorite between Sweet Vengeance and Descent Into Chaos, I'd have to go with the latter. It's such a masterpiece of aggressive, no compromise, jaw-dropping melodic death metal. It has everything that made the genre as good as it could be. The melodic elements take nothing away from the fantastic death metal elements, so the riffs are air-tight and enjoyable, and the songs actually go somewhere, unlike so many melodeath bands who write their entire songs around catchy clean choruses.



I'm going to throw my hat in this and mention Carcass with their albums Heartwork and Surgical Steel, and I don't care if I sound like your grandpa on this one, because you kids don't know what you're talking about and there would be none of your Amons Zamarths, Dark Trans Quilting and In summum without Carcass. Now know a lot of the early days fans of Carcass didn't like the switch from grindcore/death metal to melodic death metal, but I actually think both eras of Carcass are extremely relevant and amazing. They only really lost my interest with Swansong when they dug a little too deep into the whole death 'n' roll trend. So yes, Heartwork, IMHO, is an absolute classic of melodic death metal, not just because it pioneered the genre, but because the riffing is still absolutely amazing, and it retained the signature sound of Bill Steer, who never sacrificed quality song-writing in favor of cheap catchy choruses. Still, most tracks on Heartwork are very catchy and it's a very dynamic record.



Oh, and since I mocked the Swedes earlier, I'm going to conclude this post with a quick mention of Scar Symmetry, which is one of the greatest melodic death metal acts there is. With Alvestam they were toying with prog metal and going for a more complex approach to the genre, which I loved. Pitch Black Progress is one hell of an album. But I also like their sound post-Alvestam, as they went for simpler song structures and a more epic and straight-forward approach to song-writing. The Unseen Empire is a great album. Amon Amarth's early material is also worth mentionning. A lot of people are familiar with their most recent material, but on their first three or four records, they were basically a more melodic Bolt Thrower, and they had great songs scattered throughout these early records.

As for Nightrage, their first two albums are absolute classics of the genre. Their third album, A New Disease Is Born, is a good album, but it's a transition record. The band started to incorporate some of the most popular and cliché elements of the genre, and they also implemented clean vocals, which were almost completely absent of the first two records. If I had to pick a favorite between Sweet Vengeance and Descent Into Chaos, I'd have to go with the latter. It's such a masterpiece of aggressive, no compromise, jaw-dropping melodic death metal. It has everything that made the genre as good as it could be. The melodic elements take nothing away from the fantastic death metal elements, so the riffs are air-tight and enjoyable, and the songs actually go somewhere, unlike so many melodeath bands who write their entire songs around catchy clean choruses.

Oh, and since I mocked the Swedes earlier, I'm going to conclude this post with a quick mention of Scar Symmetry, which is one of the greatest melodic death metal acts there is. With Alvestam they were toying with prog metal and going for a more complex approach to the genre, which I loved. Pitch Black Progress is one hell of an album. But I also like their sound post-Alvestam, as they went for simpler song structures and a more epic and straight-forward approach to song-writing. The Unseen Empire is a great album.

I agree with all of these picks, but I question this notion that none of the Swedish bands would've existed without Carcass. Maybe melodic death metal wouldn't have gotten as popular without Carcass, but Dark Tranquillity and In Flames were already heading in that direction before Heartwork was even released. Hell the first Dark Tranquillity album, Skydancer, was recorded in the same time period and released a few months before Heartwork.

I agree with all of these picks, but I question this notion that none of the Swedish bands would've existed without Carcass. Maybe melodic death metal wouldn't have gotten as popular without Carcass, but Dark Tranquillity and In Flames were already heading in that direction before Heartwork was even released. Hell the first Dark Tranquillity album, Skydancer, was recorded in the same time period and released a few months before Heartwork. The same can be said for Insomnium, who were always more influenced by Sentenced and Amorphis along with a couple of other bands like Opeth and Paradise Lost.

Huge melo-death idiot here. Love all the iconic, classic Swedish (and abroad) stuff...In Flames' Colony was actually the first metal CD I ever bought so this shit is ingrained in my soul .

Anyway, instead of mentioning obvious ones here's a few more "underground" faves of mine:

Scum - Purple Dreams and Magic Poems...one of the greatest melodic death metal albums to ever come out of Finland (or anywhere for that matter), rivaling classics like North From Here, Tales..., A Leftover, and Hatebreeder. These guys have a pretty unique, "heavy metal-esque" approach to the style, very mid-paced but no less catchy and powerful. The album is extremely rare and expensive but luckily I finally got my hands on a mint condition copy a few months back .



A Canorous Quintet - Silence of the World Beyond...these guys aren't too underground (drummer is the guy from Amon Amarth...or was, I guess) but still you rarely seem to see them mentioned. One of my favorites of that classic "No Fashion" sound, very melancholic while also extremely catchy. The LP reissue that The Crypt did years ago is highly recommended for anyone into that shit - has some real great liner notes that goes into deep detail about the album, track by track.



Sins of Omission - The Creation...Martin Persson's band before he joined Dismember, need I say more? Criminally underrated stuff, here folks! And just look at that gorgeous album cover.



Auberon - The Tale of Black..., these guys are a little different. Sort of a (old) Dark Tranquillity-esque sound but with a surprising amount of variety, a lot of power metal influence (in the CD booklet the band thanks Kai Hansen as their #1 influence) with very well-executed clean vocals that appear just often enough but never overstay their welcome and some surprisingly very jazzy, Petrucci-esque solos that really tie the whole thing together...riffs are incredibly catchy and even the lyrics are very interesting and well-written. Can't say enough positive things about these guys.



Skymning - Stormchoirs...bit of an underground classic, not too uncommon to see people praise this to the high heavens, and for good reason...it slays! The production is a lot more rough and dirty than your average melodeath but it doesn't do anything to deter the killer riffs. The melodic riff at 5:02 is one of my favorites in this entire genre, absolutely beautiful.

Also, props to the often underrated Garden of Shadows album Oracle Moon. Their songs were on the longer side and sometimes meandering, yet never felt like a meaningless collage of riffs. It's one of those bands that show you don't have to be a pretentious prog god and write 25 minutes opuses in order to take the listener on a journey. The vocalist also went with the deeper growl associated with more traditional styles death metal, which is always a plus for me.

They always had the clean vocals. Tom Englund does them on four tracks on the debut, and Mikael Stanne on a track on the follow-up. The difference is that on their third album they had Jimmie Strimell replacing the role of both them and Tomas Lindberg, and while he's pretty good, they're a bit more metalcore-tinged, and just not in the league of the original legends. I prefer the debut, but the first two albums are both so good that it's not a huge deal which to recommend. All the later albums have flashes of brilliance as well, just not quite as consistently.