Early Rotting Christ was pretty much garage-level noise punk; I wouldn't call it grindcore or anything else. Their early DIY releases "Decline's Return/Leprosy of Death" were both uploaded at one time. This was back when they were just kids who could barely play. Their early death/grind stuff, first couple of vinyl releases (after the demos) were decent examples of blackened death grind, but obviously...their black metal stuff was clearly the best.

Mayhem's "Deathcrush" could be categorized as death/thrash metal in the vein of early Sodom, and sounded similar- simple riffs somewhat sloppily executed, and there were a lot of bands that had a similar approach who were, in my opinion, honestly better at it than Mayhem was. But "De Mysteriis Dom Satanas-" that was a genre-defining album, clearly and unequivacably pure black metal, and nobody at that time could touch that one.

I think Mayhem's De Mysteriis material was good but the actual studio album fuckin sucks mainly due to Attila Csihar's vocals. Though yeah I definitely think going from Deathcrush to stuff like the live version of Freezing Moon with Dead on vocals was definitely an improvement.

I used to think this too but eventually, the music became so great that I just almost ignored the vocals. It just became another instrument that sorta followed along with the rest of the music.

Ulcerate since Everything Is Fire.
Deathspell Omega since Si Monvmentvm Reqvires, Circvmspice.
Lorna Shore since Immortal.
Behemoth since Satanica.
Cradle of Filth since The Principle of Evil Made Flesh.
Death since Individual Thought Patterns.
Gorguts since Obscura.
Pantera since Cowboys from Hell.

My 2 cents are Blood Ceremony, their first 2 albums are kinda weak and a byproduct of the Occult/Stoner wave of 10ish years ago.

But, starting with The Eldritch Dark, they found their real sound, that is, not too far removed from their early days, but much more focused in folksy, "the wicker man" vibes, with touches of 60's pop/rock, which gives the band a lot more of personality than if they were still in the "generic sabbath riffs" game.

I think you're kinda picking the wrong band to label as "generic," as they were one of the very first to popularize that style, they were not followers, they were one of the more important trend setters of that movement, along with Totem/Jex Thtoth and Witchcraft (and maybe The Devil's Blood but I don't know much about them).

I was actually kind of hoping Blood Ceremony would go heavier. I still like them though, especially live. Never miss a chance to see them play.

Fair enough. I myself have fond memories from the times when I discovered them - and Witchcraft's first album; Jex Thoth I got into more recently -, via myspace I think. Then I got their first 2 albums, listened a lot to both of them, and ended up following the band through all the releases.

It's just that, for me, their sound from album 3 afterwards have rendered the first 2 obsolete, in that when i want some Blood Ceremony, I never go to the debut or living with the ancients. It may also be due to me being getting tired of that whole fuzzy style, with all the bands of the time. I love 90's Stoner Doom (and Rock) bands, and Black Sabbath is my favorite band ever. But Blood Ceremony's first two albums are associated with that 2010's stoner wave for me.
Other than that, Alia's vocals have improved a lot, IMO.



I would never dare missing! If they ever came play here. I have been hoping for a tour with Cauchemar and Blood Ceremony for years, I remember even drunkenly messaging Annick in facebook fanboying them and suggesting such a tour, she was really nice and patient. By the way, Cauchemar is another band I follow since the begginings, having all their albums (minus the last one); I also think they got better with each release.


It's so hard writing in english, fuck!

My vote goes to Samael
The change was gradual.
But 'Passage' (1996) was their opus magnum compared to the rather childish slumber-blackmetal on 'Worship Him' (1991)

Blood Ritual and Ceremony Of Opposites would like a word with you, although Passage is also very very good.
However, their post-Passage albums, seeing Samael in their transitioning into this electro-gothic "metal" of sorts (kind like the joke that Tiamat have become after Wildhoney), is their worst era as far as I'm concerned, and the reason I stopped listening to anything Samael-related post-Exodus.

This may be an unpopular metal opinion, but to me metal albums (not only black metal) that have satanic-related lyrics/imagery and also have some relatively long slower, less "loud", and maybe musically a bit more repetitive songs/parts - such as the song "Worship Him" by Samael or most of the songs/parts on Bethlehem's debut album - are underrated.

The word "slumber" may be appropriate to describe this album, but to me the album is more associated with atmosphere of sleep paralysis or with atmosphere of some dream where you wander alone at night in some dark and strange place. And to me in this case it's a plus that the album is not overloaded with "special effects" in the form of non-metal electronic/keyboard elements.

At least add the Peel Sessions. Awesome stuff.

I also like the mid-tempo black metal style which Samael initially dabbeled in. Another is Hades who played the same style. However, I also agree that Samael became better when they started doing more industrial stuff. A couple of their albums in that style I consider to be some of my favourite albums ever regardless of genre (something I cannot say about their black metal albums).

Electronic-tinged drum machine Samael has its interesting moments, but I definitely prefer the early stuff. I'd say Worship Him is an important and underrated album, and also has an eccentric character to it at times that becoems apparent especially if you learn to play some of the songs. They definitely have some reminiscences of their forbearers Hellhammer but the drumming and kind of unpredictable structure of the songs has a great appeal. My old band used to cover "Morbid Metal" and it was surprisingly tricky to get a handle on the song. Not that the individual parts are difficult to play, but the way each riff and change follows from one another is just kind of weird, and while that could be considered immaturity (they were after all fairly young and inexperienced), I consider it character. Also very disappointing to me when Xy gave up the drum stool. A machine may have its uses but it'll never really take the place of real drums. And that guy was really good on drums, too.

That is exactly why I said the change was gradual.
I do like Ceremony. BloodRitual not so much though

Attila's vocals are amazing. I'd much prefer his eerie, emotive performance over a generic one.

About Samael- while I would agree their late 90's stuff was probably better, it wasn't really my thing, as far as musical tastes. I owned "Worship Him" for a while and while it was okay; I always kind of dismissed it as rather bland Celtic Frost worship and never quite got into it, either.

The Chasm.

They started out with a more gloomy death/doom style, and while I do enjoy those albums for what they are, I think they got much better from Deathcult onwards once they started becoming more riffy and technical, with them adopting more thrash and classic heavy metal influences into their sound.

Very similar to what Deceased would do with Fearless Undead Machines and onward, ditching the rawer death/thrash for a more epic and heavy metal influenced form of death/thrash that suits them much better.

Yeah, I'm with Kovner on this. Harmony always felt rather bland, imo, and I find myself returning to Scum, F.E.T.O. and Utopia Banished far more often. Although, one nice thing about my copy of Harmony (on cd), is that it has the entire 'Mentally Murdered' EP tacked onto the end of it and that's right up there with the aforementioned.

Also, I love modern era ND, but I do wish they'd drop the death strains and put out another pure grind album sometime.

I'll go even further - I tried Deathcult again last year and while I appreciate the weirdness, it's just no contest compared to their 2000s run from Procession through Spell.

Panzerchrist’s two LP’s in the 90’s were simply ok mid paced death metal. Come year 2000 they get Reno Killerich on drums and they became a hyper fast death metal band with some black metal influences.

Their album Soul Collector is definitely a classic of the 2000’s.

I will say that every Samael album sounded different, they never kept one sound and up until Passage they were successful each time. Eternal was ok but very mainstream and most of what they done since has been OK to cheesy. I stuck with them since they were one of the first “black metal” bands I began to listen to, as in one of the first bands on my radar after the term “black metal” became a widely recognized description of a band’s music.

Dawn going from death metal to melodic black metal fits here, with Slaughtersun being the perfect example of why it was a good move.

Dawn were already playing melodic black metal on their debut album from 1994. When exactly did they manage to become a death metal band? On their demos?

The demos before their first full length were death metal, for example the Apparition demo from 1992.



You can see from the thanks list that they were listening to and influenced by a lot of contemporary Swedish death metal at the time. Don't get me wrong, their death metal material is pretty good, but it doesn't reach the same peaks as their material after their shift to black metal.

Yeah Dawn's debut was very good melodic black metal, but I remember it was overshadowed by the Norwegian black metal scene that was all the rage at that moment in time, rendering the Swedish contemporaries, and especially this little unknown gem of an album as a lesser kind, second tier black metal. Never knew they were a death metal band at their inception though.

Black Tongue started as more or less another generic downtempo-core band but as of late they're adding more and more black/doom/sludge-y elements which added a whole new oppressive dimension to their sound, culminating in their last & in my opinion best album, Nadir. I'd love to see them keep expanding in that direction.



Another band following a similar type of more metallic evolution would be Mental Cruelty in their last two albums