A style of music whose listeners know and appreciate the level of skill and often "tight" musicianship, characterized by the ability to churn out complex 32nd and 64th note riffs with almost inhuman precision.

Also a style of music whose detractors refer to as "satanic" or "evil," despite the fact that the vast majority of them either have never actually heard any death metal.

A form of music that developed in the mid 1980's from thrash. Possessed recorded a song entitled "Death Metal" in 1984, which would appear on their debut album Seven Churches in 1985. Other bands such as Aggression, Death, Necrophagia, Nun Slaughter, Slaughter Lord and even Slayer contributed to the movement. What defined death metal was the fact that it was basically an exaggerated form of thrash--everything from the vocals (which transformed into a mix of growling, grunting and rasping) to the drumming was made harsher and heavier than before. The music itself became somewhat anti-rhythmic, and in some cases experimental (as seen with Darkthrone's Goatlord album, or the modern technicality of Necrophagist). The first bands to really modernize the movement included Autopsy, Cannibal Corpse, the virtually unkown Necrovore, Morbid Angel, Obituary, and Ripping Corpse, among others. Death metal could range from the blood and gore horror imagery of Cannibal Corpse, to the satanic overtones of Deicide, to the political statements carried by Dying Fetus. Some criticize death metal as they feel the musicians do nothing but randomly band their instruments. Nothing could be further from the truth--listen to Morbid Angel's album Covenant, for instance, or Cannibal Corpse's Gore Obsessed, to get a better perspective on the scene.

Grinding dark, brutal sounding music that shatters windows and makes ears bleed. This music has very fast solos, insane drumming, demonic vocals, and heartpounding bass.

Death metal is a genre of music ambiguous in origin. But its classification can only be defined by two common characteristics; low growling often gutteral vocals and distorted guitars. The degrees of these may vary.

Many DM bands have adopted themes of depravity. Such as murder, rape, torture, necrophilia, and pathology. Ala Cannibal Corpse, Disgorge (USA), and Pustulated. Others experimented with alternate subjects such as existentialism, nihlism, war, fear, and alternate realities and universes. Ala Disavowed, Debodified, Cryptopsy, Wormed. And some have devoted thier themes to anti-christian, satanic,necronomicon, egyptian, sumarian or demonology. Ala Deicide, Morbid Angel, Nile, and Internal Suffering.

Besides variance in themes bands vary in style. There are many styles to DM but I will seperate them into the two easiest catagories; brutal and technical. Many technical DM bands tend to stray from the typical themes of depravity and often have views similar to (black metal) bands. But thier musicianship is rival to few. Some technical DM bands would be Deeds of Flesh, Lust of Decay, and Hate Eternal. While brutal DM bands concentrate less on technicality and more on sound. And thier sound is massive! thick, tight, and low. The vocalists push thier throats into new boundries with gutteral emmisions. The drummers play with triggered kick drums, ice bells, and piccolo snare drums tuned so high that every blast beat is magnified in clarity. The guitars are detune...

"The lowest common denominator in popular music."

death metal was never meant to be popular. It's unmarketability is actually a good thing, since the industry can't make it into a trend and kill it all together like they did glam rock, rap, and grunge.

A form of underground heavy metal that involves deep-growling lyrics, distorted guitars, drums fast as shit, heavy, distorded guitars, lyrics involving death, destcrution, war, satan, egypt (Nile), poltics, and more death. people look down upon this great music only because there too fucking stupid to listen to it, stupid pop/rap/cocksucksers...you probbaly think slipknot is death metal....i pitty you

Insanely complicated form of metal music, containing psychotically fast blast beats, shredding,ripping, disemboweling, lacerating guitars, bass lines as thick as concrete, and lyrics dealing with everything on the dark side of life, nothing about love or fireworks or puppy dogs here. A form of music that takes incredible skill to play competently at a rapid pace, only the ignorant and those below the age of 14 cannot hear the talent intertwined between the beats, chords, and notes in said form of music. The vocals range from mildly to extremely distorted, giving the genre more atmosphere than in any other type of music. Big Name Examples: Carcass, Death, Deicide, Morbid Angel, Obituary, Cannibal Corpse, Nile.

In contrary to monotone hip-hop, cliche R&B, or computer generated bubblegum pop or trance music, death metal is played by people with instruments, who have the ability to generate melody from said instrument. In contrary to the similar style Black Metal, the lyrics are rarely a mere worshipping of Satan, but are usually about life and death, religion, and deeper things that people who agree with most of the above comments usually don't think about. There's a big difference between the better and worse death metal bands, and many crossover genres are used for originality in the music. For example, there's viking death metal (Amon Amarth), melodic death metal (Scar Symmetry), thrash death metal (Konkhra), black death metal (Naglfar), orchestral death metal (Hollenthon), and many others. The diversity of death metal is but one example of the many subgenres of metal, which is of course the most advanced kind of music nowadays available. The reason death metal remains underground is due to the facts that people are brainwashed with music that is so easy to swallow that they are unable to comprehend the complexity of more advanced kinds of music such as metal.