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HeavenDuff
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 1:57 pm 
 

Reading through the pre-poll discussion about albums from the 90's, I started thinking about my favorite metal albums of the decade. Since I'm a big death metal fan, I noticed that my list had a lot of albums from this era, including some of all time favorites of mine. I then decided to make a Spotify playlist of osdm albums that I like, including stuff from before the 90's, to retrace the origins of the genre and put together a list.

I noticed it was quite easy to retrace the origins, starting with Possessed's Seven Churches, and Death's Scream Bloody Gore. I made some executive decisions to include borderline bands playing on the verges and who released some of my favorite death thrash records, namely Sadus and Sepultura, and then I moved forward through the 90's, but it got increasingly difficult to choose which album to include or not the further I got in the decade.

It got me wondering when (and if) we can talk about a true end of osdm, or at least of what we consider classic death metal era. I'm asking this as a broad question because I know a definitive answer might be difficult to come up with. I think the actual discussion might be actually more interesting than the actual answers we may come up with, namely because I know that some will probably argue that osdm is a sound and not even limited to a timeframe. And I can definitely understand this line of reasoning, considering how bands like The Chasm, Incantation or Immolation kept releasing material that could be considered in continuation with the essence of osdm, throughout the 2000's.

For reference, the last album I felt safe to include in my osdm playlist, in terms of chronology, was Diabolical Conquest, released in 1998 by Incantation.

So where do you think osdm scene first ended? (Not including osdm revival, just the original osdm scene)

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Kalaratri
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 3:26 pm 
 

I feel like things really started to change around the late 1990s (1997-1998). This is when bands like Nile, Dying Fetus, Origin, Decapitated, Necrophagist etc. started coming out of the woodwork. While some of the aforementioned bands were rooted in OSDM, they evolved into something wholly separate from it with the embracing of modern production, a more technical/brutal sound etc. The fanbase also shifted and moved away from OSDM to embrace this newer sound. As a result old school death metal was largely relegated to the background for most of the early to mid 2000s, barring some of the originators like Cannibal Corpse, Immolation and Incantation or newer acts like Bloodbath that became surprisingly popular playing a style of death metal which was not very popular at the time.

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OzzyApu
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 3:45 pm 
 

I'd say earlier as in 1995/1996. That was when progressive/tech death had morphed into its own thing, more brutal death offshoots started, melodic death had begun to flourish, and OSDM bands already released their classics. That mid-90s point feels like a genuine spot to me as when the initial death metal boom of the late '80s/early '90s winded down. During that mid-90s period, you had a bunch of bands undergoing changes major changes, and what constituted as death metal had evolved.
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HeavenDuff
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 4:45 pm 
 

Kalaratri wrote:
I feel like things really started to change around the late 1990s (1997-1998). This is when bands like Nile, Dying Fetus, Origin, Decapitated, Necrophagist etc. started coming out of the woodwork. While some of the aforementioned bands were rooted in OSDM, they evolved into something wholly separate from it with the embracing of modern production, a more technical/brutal sound etc. The fanbase also shifted and moved away from OSDM to embrace this newer sound. As a result old school death metal was largely relegated to the background for most of the early to mid 2000s, barring some of the originators like Cannibal Corpse, Immolation and Incantation or newer acts like Bloodbath that became surprisingly popular playing a style of death metal which was not very popular at the time.


I like this. There are albums that fit the sound and approach of osdm, but they are outside of the timeframe of the "classic era" of the genre. In this sense, osdm would be less of a genre, even though it has some genre specific traits, but more of a timeframe. Or maybe both at the same time. Kind of like we often consider 97 to be the end of the classic era of 2nd wave black metal.

OzzyApu wrote:
I'd say earlier as in 1995/1996. That was when progressive/tech death had morphed into its own thing, more brutal death offshoots started, melodic death had begun to flourish, and OSDM bands already released their classics. That mid-90s point feels like a genuine spot to me as when the initial death metal boom of the late '80s/early '90s winded down. During that mid-90s period, you had a bunch of bands undergoing changes major changes, and what constituted as death metal had evolved.


I included some albums from after 96 in my playlist, but for a long time I considered None So Vile to be the last album of the osdm classic era. It was very brutal, fast and technical, but it was still firmly rooted, IMO, in osdm, hence the fact that I reserved it this spot in this "osdm classics" timeframe I created for myself to structure my thoughts about the scene. This would give us a nice well-rounded 10-ish years for the osdm classic scene.

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collingwood77
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 6:19 pm 
 

If we are talking about a scene or a movement, as opposed to a sound (although these are not wholly independent of each other), then around 1994 with World Demise and The Bleeding, although Once Upon the Cross from 1995 could possibly be added.

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HeavenDuff
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 6:48 pm 
 

collingwood77 wrote:
If we are talking about a scene or a movement, as opposed to a sound (although these are not wholly independent of each other), then around 1994 with World Demise and The Bleeding, although Once Upon the Cross from 1995 could possibly be added.


Well, was there ever a time when the "sound" of osdm was completely gone for an extended period of time? If the answer is no, then it's more about the scene, and finding out which album that, according to us, contributed significatively enough to the sound, while still belonging to the scene, but also marked the moment after which no other album really managed to keep the scene alive.

I was just a kid when it came out, but I know for a fact that None So Vile was very well received when it came out, while still being quite in line with the band's previous effort and contributing to the brutal death metal sound à la Suffocation, but without sounding like the more modern brutal tech death bands like Origin.

However, I could also see Diabolical Conquest, in 1998, fitting that description, although I don't know what was the shape of the scene at that point.

Obscura by Gorguts was released later in 1998, and Necrophagist released Onset of Putrefaction in 1999. These two were very important records that kickstarted and shaped modern death metal and influenced bands like Ulcerate and Obscura who came to have a big influence on the sound of death metal during the next decade, creating a scene that replaced the osdm scene.

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From_Wisdom_To_Mabt
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 7:53 pm 
 

My cutoff is probably 1994, 1995 tops. I wouldn't consider "None So Vile" to be an old school death metal record, and that was released in 1996. That's my pretty thin reasoning.

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King_of_Arnor
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 9:19 pm 
 

I see 1993 as the last golden year for OSDM with plenty of classics that year, but afterwards many of its pioneering bands declined in quality on their mid 90s releases, and new scenes (melodeath/death-doom/brutal death/tech death) were branching off from it at the same time which diversified the genre beyond the OSDM sound. So I suppose 1994-95 is when it ended.
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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 24, 2021 12:58 am 
 

From_Wisdom_To_Mabt wrote:
My cutoff is probably 1994, 1995 tops. I wouldn't consider "None So Vile" to be an old school death metal record, and that was released in 1996. That's my pretty thin reasoning.


Yeah, as someone who heard some DM in the mid-late-90s, but wasn't exactly a real fan of it until almost a decade later, my sense in reading some books and assorted discussions and interviews with bands and fans, there seems to be a distinct change in the feel of the scene around the mid-90s. Black metal is taking off, bigger DM bands are now on major labels, the scene is morphing with the technical, brutal, melodic, and other variants, key bands are mostly done releasing their strongest material. By the mid-late-90s it seems a lot of people involved felt it was something of a dark age period for purer forms of DM (though obviously if you dig deep enough there are still some quality albums being released).

Cryptopsy always felt more like a part of the start of something new than the continuation of something old. To me they were emblematic of the shift, along with Nile, Anata, and others. There are always outliers, of course. Cynic's Focus simultaneously feels both like part of the 80s and also still ahead of its time, and that's '93. Even Atheist's Piece of Time or Pestilence's Testimony of the Ancients, while chronologically are part of OSDM, feel more like augurs of a future era.

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collingwood77
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 24, 2021 9:06 am 
 

King_of_Arnor wrote:
I see 1993 as the last golden year for OSDM with plenty of classics that year, but afterwards many of its pioneering bands declined in quality on their mid 90s releases, and new scenes (melodeath/death-doom/brutal death/tech death) were branching off from it at the same time which diversified the genre beyond the OSDM sound. So I suppose 1994-95 is when it ended.


Also, some of the key bands had either a longish break or changes in members after 1994 so it can be seen as the end of an era, especially for Florida DM. Obituary released World Demise in 1994 and no full-length until the fairly unpopular Back from the Dead in 1997. Even the title of that album suggests a reawakening, a new nostalgic factor, a gap, a big change. Barnes left Cannibal Corpse and so that was a major change leading up to Vile (1996). Deicide, for whatever reason, had a three year break between albums from 1992-95.

Cryptopsy were more technical and were from Canada so I don't associate them with OSDM- I would limit that to Florida, New York, and Sweden. Cryptopsy were like a second wave and influenced by OSDM. The rebirth of Vital Remains with Forever Underground (1997) was part of movement rebirth too. There is a part in Albert Mudrian's book Choosing Death on this period.

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Frank Booth
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 24, 2021 9:39 am 
 

I'd say late 90s for sure. Cryptopsy, Dying Fetus, Deeds of Flesh, and Angelcorpse started that new order, and then you had Nile, Hate Eternal, Origin, Disgorge, Skinless, Devourment, and other bands like that who were rewriting the rules really enter the picture. OSDM as a whole ended more around the middle of the decade, and while shifting tastes were part of it, I also blame Roadrunner and nu metal for a lot of it - they had a massive unexpected hit with Roots, and death metal was off the table for them once that happened (probably not helped by a lot of bands breaking up or being mired in dysfunction around that time).

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collingwood77
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 24, 2021 10:23 am 
 

Frank Booth wrote:
I'd say late 90s for sure. Cryptopsy, Dying Fetus, Deeds of Flesh, and Angelcorpse started that new order, and then you had Nile, Hate Eternal, Origin, Disgorge, Skinless, Devourment, and other bands like that who were rewriting the rules really enter the picture. OSDM as a whole ended more around the middle of the decade, and while shifting tastes were part of it, I also blame Roadrunner and nu metal for a lot of it - they had a massive unexpected hit with Roots, and death metal was off the table for them once that happened (probably not helped by a lot of bands breaking up or being mired in dysfunction around that time).


Definitely that's right about Roadrunner and Roots, and Black Metal made a huge impact from 1992 onwards, taking many former Death Metal fans away.

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HeavenDuff
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 24, 2021 11:08 am 
 

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
From_Wisdom_To_Mabt wrote:
My cutoff is probably 1994, 1995 tops. I wouldn't consider "None So Vile" to be an old school death metal record, and that was released in 1996. That's my pretty thin reasoning.


Yeah, as someone who heard some DM in the mid-late-90s, but wasn't exactly a real fan of it until almost a decade later, my sense in reading some books and assorted discussions and interviews with bands and fans, there seems to be a distinct change in the feel of the scene around the mid-90s. Black metal is taking off, bigger DM bands are now on major labels, the scene is morphing with the technical, brutal, melodic, and other variants, key bands are mostly done releasing their strongest material. By the mid-late-90s it seems a lot of people involved felt it was something of a dark age period for purer forms of DM (though obviously if you dig deep enough there are still some quality albums being released).

Cryptopsy always felt more like a part of the start of something new than the continuation of something old. To me they were emblematic of the shift, along with Nile, Anata, and others. There are always outliers, of course. Cynic's Focus simultaneously feels both like part of the 80s and also still ahead of its time, and that's '93. Even Atheist's Piece of Time or Pestilence's Testimony of the Ancients, while chronologically are part of OSDM, feel more like augurs of a future era.


Considering how early the more progressive/technical and brutal elements of the genre came to be incorporated in the genre (Human and Effigy Of The Forgotten, both released in 1991), I think we can't exclude the early stages of tech and brutal death metal from the osdm scene. They were very important in shaping the sound of the scene. Atheist is an example of a band that I couldn't imagine not include in osdm classics. While they did have an influence on the very distinctively not osdm tech death scene of the 2000's they still had key components of osdm that makes them, like Pestilence's TOTA, undeniably osdm.

As for Cryptopsy, I consider that they made the switch to "modern" death metal in 1998 with Whisper Supremacy. None So Vile felt like a natural evolution of their sound from their debut, Blasphemy Made Flesh, which I consider to be firmly rooted in osdm, picking up on the more brutal and extreme elements of bands like Suffocation and pushing the boundaries, while retaining key elements of osdm.

collingwood77 wrote:
Cryptopsy were more technical and were from Canada so I don't associate them with OSDM- I would limit that to Florida, New York, and Sweden. Cryptopsy were like a second wave and influenced by OSDM. The rebirth of Vital Remains with Forever Underground (1997) was part of movement rebirth too. There is a part in Albert Mudrian's book Choosing Death on this period.


Well that's a pretty arbitrary delimitation... If you argued that only the Floridian scene counts as osdm, I would have disagreed, but you would have had some kind of logic behind your reasoning. But including New York, which is far closer to Quebec than it is close to Flordia, btw, but excluding Canada because of a country's borders? That's just plain wrong. Gorguts are from Montreal and released two, undeniably osdm records in 1991 and 1993. It makes zero sense not to include Canadian bands in osdm.

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Frank Booth
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 24, 2021 12:05 pm 
 

I think Cryptopsy was a new and exciting thing because BMF and especially NSV took so many things and rolled them into one cohesive whole. You had Lord Worm doing gutturals that put even Frank Mullen or Joe Ptacek to shame, you had a great deal of technical wizardry going on, you had the breakneck, barely-controlled grindiness, you had a drummer who could push the BPM meter into the red but didn't feel sterile or clinical, you had the big pit riffs and chug breakdowns that you'd more expect from something like Internal Bleeding or Dying Fetus, and you had the disgusting, grimy feel that kept the speed and technicality from overwhelming you and made the grooves and breakdowns hit harder.

Also, Kataklysm should probably get a mention for QCDM, the Houde era had the same breakneck grindy technicality as BMF/NSV, but put a weirder spin on it with an epic high fantasy concept and I feel like that also turned a few heads at the time. I would also say Martyr, but they came along at the end of the decade and the early 2000s were more their time to shine.

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collingwood77
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 24, 2021 3:01 pm 
 

HeavenDuff wrote:
LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
From_Wisdom_To_Mabt wrote:
My cutoff is probably 1994, 1995 tops. I wouldn't consider "None So Vile" to be an old school death metal record, and that was released in 1996. That's my pretty thin reasoning.


Yeah, as someone who heard some DM in the mid-late-90s, but wasn't exactly a real fan of it until almost a decade later, my sense in reading some books and assorted discussions and interviews with bands and fans, there seems to be a distinct change in the feel of the scene around the mid-90s. Black metal is taking off, bigger DM bands are now on major labels, the scene is morphing with the technical, brutal, melodic, and other variants, key bands are mostly done releasing their strongest material. By the mid-late-90s it seems a lot of people involved felt it was something of a dark age period for purer forms of DM (though obviously if you dig deep enough there are still some quality albums being released).

Cryptopsy always felt more like a part of the start of something new than the continuation of something old. To me they were emblematic of the shift, along with Nile, Anata, and others. There are always outliers, of course. Cynic's Focus simultaneously feels both like part of the 80s and also still ahead of its time, and that's '93. Even Atheist's Piece of Time or Pestilence's Testimony of the Ancients, while chronologically are part of OSDM, feel more like augurs of a future era.


Considering how early the more progressive/technical and brutal elements of the genre came to be incorporated in the genre (Human and Effigy Of The Forgotten, both released in 1991), I think we can't exclude the early stages of tech and brutal death metal from the osdm scene. They were very important in shaping the sound of the scene. Atheist is an example of a band that I couldn't imagine not include in osdm classics. While they did have an influence on the very distinctively not osdm tech death scene of the 2000's they still had key components of osdm that makes them, like Pestilence's TOTA, undeniably osdm.

As for Cryptopsy, I consider that they made the switch to "modern" death metal in 1998 with Whisper Supremacy. None So Vile felt like a natural evolution of their sound from their debut, Blasphemy Made Flesh, which I consider to be firmly rooted in osdm, picking up on the more brutal and extreme elements of bands like Suffocation and pushing the boundaries, while retaining key elements of osdm.

collingwood77 wrote:
Cryptopsy were more technical and were from Canada so I don't associate them with OSDM- I would limit that to Florida, New York, and Sweden. Cryptopsy were like a second wave and influenced by OSDM. The rebirth of Vital Remains with Forever Underground (1997) was part of movement rebirth too. There is a part in Albert Mudrian's book Choosing Death on this period.


Well that's a pretty arbitrary delimitation... If you argued that only the Floridian scene counts as osdm, I would have disagreed, but you would have had some kind of logic behind your reasoning. But including New York, which is far closer to Quebec than it is close to Flordia, btw, but excluding Canada because of a country's borders? That's just plain wrong. Gorguts are from Montreal and released two, undeniably osdm records in 1991 and 1993. It makes zero sense not to include Canadian bands in osdm.


OK, good point. There is no strong reason why Gorguts can't be included except that they were more technical. In retrospect, not including Canadian bands only because they weren't Canadian makes little sense - unless we go back to saying "only Florida bands," which I could live with. They were the first scene to make an impact as a scene as opposed to just one band or even a group of bands.

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robotniq
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 24, 2021 4:08 pm 
 

I'd say 1993 with records like "The Nocturnal Silence" and "Iniquitous".

You could push to 1994 and include records from the beginning of that year; "Bitterness", "Terminal Spirit Disease", "The Ending Quest" (the latter was recorded in early '93 though).

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hells_unicorn
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 24, 2021 5:26 pm 
 

I think I'd have to agree with the mid to late 90s as the cutoff point for old school death metal, though I can't really pinpoint a specific year as the hard break from where the original style's dominance ended and the various offshoots like tech death, melodeath, progressive death and brutal death took over. I look at it more through the lens of a number of significant changes in the prime movers of the sound, or in more of a micro sense rather than macro. Things like Chuck Schuldiner's interest shifting towards more melodic modes of metal following Symbolic, Chris Barnes leaving Cannibal Corpse and the release of both Vile and Six Feet Under's debut Haunted (each of which presented a split towards either a more technical or more streamlined approach to things), Obituary splitting up (which may have served to separate the groovier death 'n' roll style that they influenced from its old school roots) David Vincent leaving Morbid Angel, and the decline of the parallel death/thrash scene via the split of bands like Revenant, Solstice and a few others.

In a macro sense, I guess I'd argue that when the New York death metal scene began to supplant the Florida scene and the Swedish old school scene started to shift towards melodic death metal, that's when the old school ended. Even though technically speaking bands like Immolation and Suffocation existed concurrently with the high period of the Florida scene, their sound was closer to the more brutal one that took over in the late 90s, and I'd argue that they were themselves not really part of the old school sound. Granted, I think you can only really distill what one would call the old school death metal sound by hindsight, as it was all just considered death metal during its time despite the little nuances in approach that developed over time. I think one of the earliest cases of a death metal band actually being considered "old school" in name during the beginning of their run is Jungle Rot, as they rose to prominence during a time when death metal was going through a crazy amount of evolutionary changes and were singularly focused on emulating the older sound.
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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 24, 2021 5:38 pm 
 

collingwood77 wrote:
OSDM- I would limit that to Florida, New York, and Sweden.


I don't think you can do that. What about Asphyx (Netherlands), Autopsy (California), Bolt Thrower (UK), Darkthrone (Norway, just on Soulside Journey), Demilich (Finland), Gorguts (Canada), Master (Illinois), Necrophagia (Ohio), Repulsion (Michigan), and others? The three you listed are certainly the epicenters, but it already fairly global.

HeavenDuff wrote:
Considering how early the more progressive/technical and brutal elements of the genre came to be incorporated in the genre (Human and Effigy Of The Forgotten, both released in 1991), I think we can't exclude the early stages of tech and brutal death metal from the osdm scene. They were very important in shaping the sound of the scene. Atheist is an example of a band that I couldn't imagine not include in osdm classics. While they did have an influence on the very distinctively not osdm tech death scene of the 2000's they still had key components of osdm that makes them, like Pestilence's TOTA, undeniably osdm.

As for Cryptopsy, I consider that they made the switch to "modern" death metal in 1998 with Whisper Supremacy. None So Vile felt like a natural evolution of their sound from their debut, Blasphemy Made Flesh, which I consider to be firmly rooted in osdm, picking up on the more brutal and extreme elements of bands like Suffocation and pushing the boundaries, while retaining key elements of osdm.


Two key differences I think are production and the direct influence of 80s thrash. Atheist, Cynic, Pestilence and others still have that aesthetic baked into their sonic presentation, and as forward thinking as some of their other ideas are, that aura ties them back to the earlier days of the scene. By the time you get to the mid-90s everything is just starting to sound different in terms of how performances are captured, engineered, mixed, produced and such, and the thrash element has really waned as an integral part of most band's sounds. Cryptopsy is kind of a bridge between the eras, but even their first two albums seem to have a different vibe to them that isn't so 80s-derived. There's a surgical precision and clarity in the way they play and are recorded that to me is evident even early on and sounds more "modern".

collingwood77 wrote:
unless we go back to saying "only Florida bands," which I could live with. They were the first scene to make an impact as a scene as opposed to just one band or even a group of bands.


What's the distinction between Florida then compared to New York (Suffocation, Immolation, Incantation, Malevolent Creation, Brutal Truth, Mortician, etc.), or Sweden (Nihilist/Entombed, Dismember, Grave, Unleashed, Carnage, Merciless, etc.)?

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HeavenDuff
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 1:15 am 
 

collingwood77 wrote:
OK, good point. There is no strong reason why Gorguts can't be included except that they were more technical. In retrospect, not including Canadian bands only because they weren't Canadian makes little sense - unless we go back to saying "only Florida bands," which I could live with. They were the first scene to make an impact as a scene as opposed to just one band or even a group of bands.


Yes, there is no denying that the Floridian scene was very important to the osdm classic scene. Without them, bands like Gorguts and Cryptopsy probably wouldn't have existed, or not in the shape and form they had, at least. When the floridian scene started to decline, they pretty brought the end of the "osdm classic era"

hells_unicorn wrote:
I think I'd have to agree with the mid to late 90s as the cutoff point for old school death metal, though I can't really pinpoint a specific year as the hard break from where the original style's dominance ended and the various offshoots like tech death, melodeath, progressive death and brutal death took over. I look at it more through the lens of a number of significant changes in the prime movers of the sound, or in more of a micro sense rather than macro. Things like Chuck Schuldiner's interest shifting towards more melodic modes of metal following Symbolic, Chris Barnes leaving Cannibal Corpse and the release of both Vile and Six Feet Under's debut Haunted (each of which presented a split towards either a more technical or more streamlined approach to things), Obituary splitting up (which may have served to separate the groovier death 'n' roll style that they influenced from its old school roots) David Vincent leaving Morbid Angel, and the decline of the parallel death/thrash scene via the split of bands like Revenant, Solstice and a few others.

In a macro sense, I guess I'd argue that when the New York death metal scene began to supplant the Florida scene and the Swedish old school scene started to shift towards melodic death metal, that's when the old school ended. Even though technically speaking bands like Immolation and Suffocation existed concurrently with the high period of the Florida scene, their sound was closer to the more brutal one that took over in the late 90s, and I'd argue that they were themselves not really part of the old school sound. Granted, I think you can only really distill what one would call the old school death metal sound by hindsight, as it was all just considered death metal during its time despite the little nuances in approach that developed over time. I think one of the earliest cases of a death metal band actually being considered "old school" in name during the beginning of their run is Jungle Rot, as they rose to prominence during a time when death metal was going through a crazy amount of evolutionary changes and were singularly focused on emulating the older sound.


This is a very intersting take. In your first paragraph you mention bands splitting up, important members leaving or bands drifting away from their original style, and I think this is very accurate. It definitely had an impact on the scene. Sepultura is another good example of this. As early as 1993, they were already shifting away from the death/thrash scene that they helped establish, and by 1996, they were a full-on groove/nu-metal act, and they dragged a good chunk of the extreme metal fanbase of the time down that path with them.

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Smalley
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 4:27 am 
 

HeavenDuff wrote:
This is a very intersting take. In your first paragraph you mention bands splitting up, important members leaving or bands drifting away from their original style, and I think this is very accurate. It definitely had an impact on the scene. Sepultura is another good example of this. As early as 1993, they were already shifting away from the death/thrash scene that they helped establish, and by 1996, they were a full-on groove/nu-metal act, and they dragged a good chunk of the extreme metal fanbase of the time down that path with them.
Yeah, although I think Sep did a much better job of changing up their sound after the early phase of their career was over than most Metal bands have, for what it's worth.
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 8:17 am 
 

Now that I think about it, another way to pinpoint when OSDM ended is with Scott Burns' retirement from the music industry in 1996. It's undeniable that he was hugely influential on the OSDM sound as producer/mixer/engineer for a number of bands, so his departure affected how they sounded all at once from roughly 1997 onward. Add to that many of the old school bands taking notes from the newer bands to stay relevant and the shift was made even more significant.
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 11:05 am 
 

I tend to think of 1993 as about the time different fusions/permutations and the popular ascendance of black metal eclipsed the core style.

The significance of Wolverine Blues is underrated too, I think, especially when viewing the subsequent shift of a good number of European DM bands into more rockish forms of (death) metal or out of metal entirely.

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collingwood77
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 11:07 am 
 

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
collingwood77 wrote:
OSDM- I would limit that to Florida, New York, and Sweden.


I don't think you can do that. What about Asphyx (Netherlands), Autopsy (California), Bolt Thrower (UK), Darkthrone (Norway, just on Soulside Journey), Demilich (Finland), Gorguts (Canada), Master (Illinois), Necrophagia (Ohio), Repulsion (Michigan), and others? The three you listed are certainly the epicenters, but it already fairly global.

HeavenDuff wrote:
Considering how early the more progressive/technical and brutal elements of the genre came to be incorporated in the genre (Human and Effigy Of The Forgotten, both released in 1991), I think we can't exclude the early stages of tech and brutal death metal from the osdm scene. They were very important in shaping the sound of the scene. Atheist is an example of a band that I couldn't imagine not include in osdm classics. While they did have an influence on the very distinctively not osdm tech death scene of the 2000's they still had key components of osdm that makes them, like Pestilence's TOTA, undeniably osdm.

As for Cryptopsy, I consider that they made the switch to "modern" death metal in 1998 with Whisper Supremacy. None So Vile felt like a natural evolution of their sound from their debut, Blasphemy Made Flesh, which I consider to be firmly rooted in osdm, picking up on the more brutal and extreme elements of bands like Suffocation and pushing the boundaries, while retaining key elements of osdm.


Two key differences I think are production and the direct influence of 80s thrash. Atheist, Cynic, Pestilence and others still have that aesthetic baked into their sonic presentation, and as forward thinking as some of their other ideas are, that aura ties them back to the earlier days of the scene. By the time you get to the mid-90s everything is just starting to sound different in terms of how performances are captured, engineered, mixed, produced and such, and the thrash element has really waned as an integral part of most band's sounds. Cryptopsy is kind of a bridge between the eras, but even their first two albums seem to have a different vibe to them that isn't so 80s-derived. There's a surgical precision and clarity in the way they play and are recorded that to me is evident even early on and sounds more "modern".

collingwood77 wrote:
unless we go back to saying "only Florida bands," which I could live with. They were the first scene to make an impact as a scene as opposed to just one band or even a group of bands.


What's the distinction between Florida then compared to New York (Suffocation, Immolation, Incantation, Malevolent Creation, Brutal Truth, Mortician, etc.), or Sweden (Nihilist/Entombed, Dismember, Grave, Unleashed, Carnage, Merciless, etc.)?


Malevolent Creation and Cannibal both moved to Florida early on, so there must have been "something" there that wasn't in New York. There was cohesion, people knew each other well and guested on each other's albums, and there was a fairly well-defined sound, with some variations (but generally not highly technical). There was Scott Burns and Morrisound Studios. So I would say it ended around 1995, and then Cryptopsy began something, as others have said, which was seen as new and not as a continuation of what went before. I probably can't contribute to the discussion any more beyond this, so I will leave it here.

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Frank Booth
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 12:52 pm 
 

The Buffalo bands moved to Florida because it's where the opportunities were. Upstate's scene was basically just Buffalo and there wasn't anything to speak of in Ontario at that time either, so they went to where things were happening.

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hells_unicorn
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 3:15 pm 
 

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
I don't think you can do that. What about Asphyx (Netherlands), Autopsy (California), Bolt Thrower (UK), Darkthrone (Norway, just on Soulside Journey), Demilich (Finland), Gorguts (Canada), Master (Illinois), Necrophagia (Ohio), Repulsion (Michigan), and others? The three you listed are certainly the epicenters, but it already fairly global.


I think you have to take all of those bands into account, but at the same time, a case could be made that Florida, New York and Sweden work in measuring the ebb and flow of the entire scene because they functioned as focal points given how many bands were centered in each location and how visible/influential their scenes became. I don't think you can distill it down to an exact equation and say "On this date in 1993/1994/1995 is when OSDM ended", there are a lot of moving parts involved, including outlier bands that don't quite conform to the rest of the movement. If you were to singularly focus on the earliest contributors to death metal (Sepultura, Possessed, Necrophagia, Death, etc.), you could argue that it ended in 1990, but this would involve discounting so many important albums both inside and outside of Florida that it would become absurd. Then again, if we don't treat bands like Suffocation as outliers within the original death metal movement, it gets a lot harder to draw any distinctions between the old school sound and the modern brutal one that Dying Fetus and Cryptopsy would popularize in the later 90s.

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
What's the distinction between Florida then compared to New York (Suffocation, Immolation, Incantation, Malevolent Creation, Brutal Truth, Mortician, etc.), or Sweden (Nihilist/Entombed, Dismember, Grave, Unleashed, Carnage, Merciless, etc.)?


From my vantage point, the distinction is mostly in production style and the corresponding atmosphere that is developed. The Florida sound had a closer connection with the still somewhat thrash-influenced strides made by Possessed and Slayer in the mid-80s, barring maybe the exception of Morbid Angel (though Trey Azagthoth's ultra-chaotic guitar soloing style is pretty heavily influenced by Kerry King), and on that front you would probably have to put the Barnes era of Cannibal Corpse and Malevolent Creation into the Florida camp despite not being originally from there. By contrast, the New York sound as typified in the likes of Incantation, Immolation and Suffocation is far more brutal and further away from the 80s thrash template. To be fair, some NY bands didn't go that far into the brutal direction, but there is definitely a far more dissonant and chaotic riffing approach at work. The Swedish sound is a bit more nuanced because it tended a little closer to the thrash-tinged character of the Florida scene, but the atmosphere is somehow danker and colder. Some of this gets a little subjective, but if I were to hear an obscure band doing a pure emulation of one of these signature styles, I could tie it to one of those 3 scenes in a couple of minutes. Likewise, you can hear tendencies towards one of these scenes in bands not from those respective areas, such as Fleshcrawl from Germany and Darkthrone's Soulside Journey, which both have some pretty strong Swedish tendencies, whereas it's hard to miss the parallels that Necrophagia and Master have with early Death. Each band naturally has their own individual quirks (Master has a pretty strong Motorhead tinge to their early albums that's similar to Possessed, especially in the vocal department, for example), but you could tie each of them to one of the 3 scenes under consideration.
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Last edited by hells_unicorn on Sun Jul 25, 2021 4:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 4:20 pm 
 

Looks like you butchered the quotation marks a bit, so you're actually replying to me. Obviously Florida is a major hotspot for the early scene, even bands like Suffocation and Napalm Death are going down there to have Scott Burns produce their albums. Sweden is central in Europe, with tons of people going to Tomas Skogsberg in Stockholm to use Sunlight Studios. Or a few years later with the more melodic bands flocking to Studio Fredman in Gothenburg helmed by Frederik Nordstrom. And New York has become even more important over time with Suffocation spawning so many brutal-focused bands, or the Incantation-core bands that swelled up sometime after. But still, I object to the idea of "limiting" it to those areas. If you count Possessed's Seven Churches as the first DM album (and even if you don't, you have to admit it's damn close), and that's California. Then there's the influential death/thrash of Sepultura, Sarcofago and others in Brazil, the Teutonic thrash of Germany pushing the envelope towards DM via Kreator, Sodom, Destruction and others, the grindcore of Carcass and others in the UK, so there are things happening all over the place.

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hells_unicorn
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 4:30 pm 
 

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
Looks like you butchered the quotation marks a bit, so you're actually replying to me. Obviously Florida is a major hotspot for the early scene, even bands like Suffocation and Napalm Death are going down there to have Scott Burns produce their albums. Sweden is central in Europe, with tons of people going to Tomas Skogsberg in Stockholm to use Sunlight Studios. Or a few years later with the more melodic bands flocking to Studio Fredman in Gothenburg helmed by Frederik Nordstrom. And New York has become even more important over time with Suffocation spawning so many brutal-focused bands, or the Incantation-core bands that swelled up sometime after. But still, I object to the idea of "limiting" it to those areas. If you count Possessed's Seven Churches as the first DM album (and even if you don't, you have to admit it's damn close), and that's California. Then there's the influential death/thrash of Sepultura, Sarcofago and others in Brazil, so there are things happening all over the place.


Yeah, I just fixed the quotations, I was trying to avoid having it be too convoluted and mixed up the names when I was cutting out the other stuff. I would assert that even if we didn't count Possessed as the first death metal band to release an LP (I personally would), you don't really have an actual death metal style without the input of both Possessed and Slayer, who were both based in California. Ditto with Sepulture and Sarcofago in Brazil. Having said that, both of those pairs aren't necessarily indicative of a larger trend in their respective scenes (you could argue that Slayer and Possessed were both outliers of the Bay Area thrash scene, which comprised several other bands). Florida was the first scene that was almost exclusively a death metal one, so I think as a location it serves as a focal point, and to the extent that Slayer and Possessed pioneered the sound that Death and the others picked up on, you could treat them as progenitors of the Florida sound.

I don't think you can necessarily limit the entire OSDM movement to these 3 locations, I'm more of the position that you can summarize the tendencies of its many diverse sounds by using those scenes as a starting point. If you really delve into the nuances in each scene, you could argue that Grave was something of an outlier in the Swedish scene when compared against the others, and the same could be applied to Morbid Angel in contrast to Death, Deicide and Obituary. It's not an exact science, but more an educated approximation based on a sizable part of the whole.
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CrudeNoiseMonger
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 5:28 pm 
 

From_Wisdom_To_Mabt wrote:
My cutoff is probably 1994, 1995 tops.


Yeah that's also about the time i felt the first big wave was over.

Popular bands were well established, on prominent labels, you'd see them mentioned or even featured in rather mainstream music magazines, some had multiple lp releases by then. What was before an anamoly was now pretty much a given. Right about that time was when newer bands either were blatantly copying the original bands or coming up with their own takes on things. I know amongst the guys i knew, Kataklysm's Sorcery LP in early 95 was looked upon as a new direction. For sure we had never heard anything like it. Some above in the thread mention Black Metal. Well, i introduced Black Metal to my local scene via three bands in 1994... Mayhem, Emperor, and Darkthrone. There was a lot of scoffing and mocking at first but within a few months it wasn't unusual hearing tremolo riffing and those Snorre/Euronymous chords being frequently practiced as well as a lot of Black Metal releases, bands, and zines being tracked down. All of a sudden, it was like whatever was coming out of Florida, for example, wasn't really that important anymore.

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HeavenDuff
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 26, 2021 1:38 am 
 

hells_unicorn wrote:
Then again, if we don't treat bands like Suffocation as outliers within the original death metal movement, it gets a lot harder to draw any distinctions between the old school sound and the modern brutal one that Dying Fetus and Cryptopsy would popularize in the later 90s.


Well, that was kind of the point I was trying to make earlier. How can we exclude Suffocation from osdm? Regardless of the influence they had on shaping the brutal death metal subgenre, in 1991 their sound was deeply rooted in osdm. If we're going to exclude such band for being a little too different, then we'd also have to exclude albums like Human or Unquestionable Presence. There really wouldn't be much osdm if we did.

And yes, if we do include Suffocation in osdm, I find it hard to exclude Cryptopsy's first two records from the osdm classic era, which is why I tend to include them, although None So Vile is most likely the latest record I'd include in osdm.

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hells_unicorn
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 26, 2021 3:06 pm 
 

HeavenDuff wrote:
hells_unicorn wrote:
Then again, if we don't treat bands like Suffocation as outliers within the original death metal movement, it gets a lot harder to draw any distinctions between the old school sound and the modern brutal one that Dying Fetus and Cryptopsy would popularize in the later 90s.


Well, that was kind of the point I was trying to make earlier. How can we exclude Suffocation from osdm? Regardless of the influence they had on shaping the brutal death metal subgenre, in 1991 their sound was deeply rooted in osdm. If we're going to exclude such band for being a little too different, then we'd also have to exclude albums like Human or Unquestionable Presence. There really wouldn't be much osdm if we did.

And yes, if we do include Suffocation in osdm, I find it hard to exclude Cryptopsy's first two records from the osdm classic era, which is why I tend to include them, although None So Vile is most likely the latest record I'd include in osdm.


This is a big part of why I have a hard time committing to a specific year as being the end of the OSDM era, because there is a lot of overlap between it and the developing sub-movements within death metal, most of which simply started by isolating and further distilling elements from certain key bands that were part of the older era. As far as timing goes, Suffocation's albums up until they split in the late 90s all count as old school death metal in my estimation, and the same basically goes with all of Incantation's and Immolation's 90s material, but at the same time their signature sound was a big part of what pushed things towards both the brutal and tech death sounds. The same basically applies to Human and Unquestionable Presence in terms of shaping the later prog death hybrid sub-genre.

I think the only way we can specifically pinpoint a distinct OSDM sound is by tying newer bands to the scene playing in an older style back into the past, which was the point I was making earlier with Jungle Rot, who I'd count as the first band to play in that specific style without being part of that era. A person could make the case that 1993 was the end of the OSDM era, while another could say it was 1996 and have about the same level of supporting evidence, whereas if I were going to really point to a specific year, I'd err on the side of including all of the important early bands and put it at around 1998 (i.e. when Death put out Sound Of Perseverance and when many of the other prime movers either split, lost key members, or radically changed their sounds).
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insanewayne253
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:05 pm 
 

I would say late 95 at the earliest. Mid 96 at the latest.

You had Pierced from Within in 95, then Suffocation went on hiatus/split up, nothing new until
98.
Morbid Angel released Domination. Nothing new until 98
Broken Hope released Repulsive Conception. Loathing didn’t come out until 98
Cannibal Corpse/Barnes split, Barnes released Haunted with Allen West and Terry Butler of Obituary while they were on hiatus; CC released Vile in 96 with the line “this album is dedicated to all those who stayed brutal”
Speaking of which you had European bands such as Entombed, Unleashed, Grave, Morgoth changing their sound (Morgoth moreso…holy shit Feel Sorry.. was terrible). You also had a few of the old Florida bands splintering such as Nocturnus and Hellwitch.
A lot of people were flipping me shit around 96 for wearing death metal shirts all saying “come on man death metal is dead”. You had Relapse branching out into industrial and noise in their catalogs and signing oddball bands like Xysma. I think Matt Jacobson and Bill Yurkewicz we’re just burnt out on the sound only to sign more grindcore bands a couple years later. Roadrunner stopped signing any death metal around 95/96. Red Light Records went under around that time, and Dwell Records stopped putting out new stuff and doing weird tribute compilations. Plus a lot of college radio either slowed down or simply stopped playing any form of death metal in favor of industrial…the latest trend in 95.

I do consider None So Vile as the last of the old school albums and at the time the last from Lord Worm. They went complete tech on Whisper Supremacy.

That’s all just off the top of my head.

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PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2021 4:15 am 
 

i'd agree with the mid 90's - apart from a lot of og bands breaking up/changing sounds, you also have the rise of melodeath from at the gates, dark tranquillity, and heartwork, which overshadowed osdm popularity wise for years

of course you still had some bands continuing on, like immolation and what have you, and osdm obviously never "died", but that's the end of its original golden era imo, because offshoots of it became bigger than osdm
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Frank Booth
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2021 8:07 am 
 

Honestly, yeah, 1995 seems fair. Things started to change over the next few years and then 1998 was the true start of the next era (1998-2004).

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HeavenDuff
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2021 3:17 pm 
 

I love the last few posts, they really help me get a new perspective on the whole thing.

hells_unicorn wrote:
HeavenDuff wrote:
hells_unicorn wrote:
Then again, if we don't treat bands like Suffocation as outliers within the original death metal movement, it gets a lot harder to draw any distinctions between the old school sound and the modern brutal one that Dying Fetus and Cryptopsy would popularize in the later 90s.


Well, that was kind of the point I was trying to make earlier. How can we exclude Suffocation from osdm? Regardless of the influence they had on shaping the brutal death metal subgenre, in 1991 their sound was deeply rooted in osdm. If we're going to exclude such band for being a little too different, then we'd also have to exclude albums like Human or Unquestionable Presence. There really wouldn't be much osdm if we did.

And yes, if we do include Suffocation in osdm, I find it hard to exclude Cryptopsy's first two records from the osdm classic era, which is why I tend to include them, although None So Vile is most likely the latest record I'd include in osdm.


This is a big part of why I have a hard time committing to a specific year as being the end of the OSDM era, because there is a lot of overlap between it and the developing sub-movements within death metal, most of which simply started by isolating and further distilling elements from certain key bands that were part of the older era. As far as timing goes, Suffocation's albums up until they split in the late 90s all count as old school death metal in my estimation, and the same basically goes with all of Incantation's and Immolation's 90s material, but at the same time their signature sound was a big part of what pushed things towards both the brutal and tech death sounds. The same basically applies to Human and Unquestionable Presence in terms of shaping the later prog death hybrid sub-genre.

I think the only way we can specifically pinpoint a distinct OSDM sound is by tying newer bands to the scene playing in an older style back into the past, which was the point I was making earlier with Jungle Rot, who I'd count as the first band to play in that specific style without being part of that era. A person could make the case that 1993 was the end of the OSDM era, while another could say it was 1996 and have about the same level of supporting evidence, whereas if I were going to really point to a specific year, I'd err on the side of including all of the important early bands and put it at around 1998 (i.e. when Death put out Sound Of Perseverance and when many of the other prime movers either split, lost key members, or radically changed their sounds).


Your contribution to the thread is very nice. Thanks for your posts!

I also like the idea of looking at the end of osdm's golden age not by finding the last osdm album(s), but by looking at key records that marked a drastic change in sound. Death's The Sound of Perseverance is a good example of this. Although still rooted in extreme metal, it's far removed from osdm and death metal in general.

joppek wrote:
i'd agree with the mid 90's - apart from a lot of og bands breaking up/changing sounds, you also have the rise of melodeath from at the gates, dark tranquillity, and heartwork, which overshadowed osdm popularity wise for years


Taking into consideration the popularity shift towards the subgenres of death metal is also a good way to draw the line. I didn't mention Carcass in my previous posts, but I kept thinking about Heartwork and how it also played a role in the switch.

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tomcat_ha
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2021 4:38 pm 
 

one thing that I think gets overlooked a bit here is that not every scene has the same trajectory.
I remember reading an interview with Deteriorot if i remember correctly and they said that people stopped coming to dm shows in 1992 already. While in other scenes some absolutely essential releases were not even recorded. Prob the last region that still had a scene that could be called OSDM was Poland with all their murky obscure doom/death bands from the mid 90s like Blameworthy Warlock and Carrion of Torrent

It does seem that OSDM died down in the US first and that in general people saw the cracks pretty clearly in 93 even if that was the year of big hits like Covenant. One pretty important movement I think was the Peaceville 3 bands changing up their sound.

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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2021 10:14 pm 
 

tomcat_ha wrote:
One pretty important movement I think was the Peaceville 3 bands changing up their sound.


And the other death/doom bands that diversified, Pyogenesis, Katatonia, The Gathering, Beyond Dawn, etc., or any number of bands who aren't always thought of first when talking about OSDM, but are still nonetheless part of it, and then shifted directions, like Sentenced's North From Here in '93, Amorphis' Tales From the Thousand Lakes in '94, Treblinka/Tiamat's progression, and others.

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OzzyApu
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2021 10:48 pm 
 

tomcat_ha wrote:
I remember reading an interview with Deteriorot if i remember correctly and they said that people stopped coming to dm shows in 1992 already.

Been listening to death metal for 15 years now and I've never heard of Deteriorot until this post. You can look up live footage of death metal bands throughout the '90s and clearly see lots of people still going to death metal shows. Granted, the bigger the band the more people who care to see them.
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HeavenDuff
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 28, 2021 6:56 pm 
 

OzzyApu wrote:
tomcat_ha wrote:
I remember reading an interview with Deteriorot if i remember correctly and they said that people stopped coming to dm shows in 1992 already.

Been listening to death metal for 15 years now and I've never heard of Deteriorot until this post. You can look up live footage of death metal bands throughout the '90s and clearly see lots of people still going to death metal shows. Granted, the bigger the band the more people who care to see them.


They made some pretty decent stuff. The reason why they are rather unknown is because they didn't release a lot of material. It's hard to keep a fanbase excited for your music when you release two LPs in a span of 30 years.

However, the fact that they themselves might not have been that big of a band doesnt mean that they were not close to the scene and that we should just discard their perspective on what was going on in the scene at the time. If they were around in the mid 90's, even has fans, they probably experienced stuff that might be worth mentionning.

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Aldrahn333
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 28, 2021 7:48 pm 
 

Frank Booth wrote:
Honestly, yeah, 1995 seems fair. Things started to change over the next few years and then 1998 was the true start of the next era (1998-2004).


Malevolent Creation kept releasing relentless death metal albums though even after 1995.

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insanewayne253
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 28, 2021 9:52 pm 
 

Hoffman left the first time around 95 and Jason took over vocals. Good albums but it was one of the many different MC eras.

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