“With Emperor we wanted to do something more back to basics, and we were totally influenced by bands like Celtic Frost, Bathory and Tormentor,” recalls Samoth, who, with former Emperor frontman Ihsahn, actually played guitar in the pre-Emperor death metal band Thou Shalt Suffer. “Later on, as Emperor progressed and formed a sound of its own, we did take certain inspirations from death metal. Especially on [Emperor’s third album] IX-Equilibrium, you can hear strong death metal elements in certain songs.
“I started out with death metal,” he continues. “And that’s the type of music that got me hooked on extreme music in the first place, so it feels very natural for me to take influences from that genre. Today I just feel more comfortable with that style. I love the brutality and aggression of death metal, that ‘bad ass’ feeling. However, I do not see Zyklon as an A4 death metal band at all. We’re taking influences from black, industrial and thrash metal. In general, I don’t see such a big difference, really. Now it’s pretty much all the same type of people basically playing the same type of music with more or less the same goals. The scene is stronger if [it’s] united.”
British extreme band Akercocke further exemplified this idea. Like most extreme metal bands of today, Akercocke formed out of a traditional death metal band—in their case, Salem Orchid—yet over the years they’ve managed to combine the black metal and death metal genres in a elegant blend of brutality.
“We certainly never contrived to create a hybrid; we all listen to lots of different kinds of music, and all of our influences get thrown into the creative crucible,” says Akercocke drummer David Gray, who formed the band with frontman Jason Mendonca in December 1996. “It is important to some people to be able to classify a band, but we don’t mind what people call us, I suppose we have our own subgenre of ‘Satanic’ metal, if you like.”
While other “Satanic” bands in the death metal scene, like Deicide and early Possessed often come across as cartoonish and juvenile, Akercocke are surprisingly refined and articulate. And although their album covers may be adorned with the well-worn Satanic metal clichés of naked women and gigantic pentagrams, Akercocke’s presentation of practicing Satanists who perform exclusively in suits shatters numerous preconceptions of how a metal band—let alone a Satanic one—should appear.
“Generally speaking, Joe Public knows absolutely nothing about Satanism whatsoever, which in theory is no problem; unfortunately he frequently pretends that he does,” says Gray. “Such urban myths as goat or baby sacrifice and Ouija boards influence the general public’s opinion to some fictional, ‘dangerous’ sort of cult that just does not exist. Looking at pictures of Possessed in 1985, when they wore inverted cross-studded wristbands and such, dousing themselves in fake blood, any rational, intelligent individual can see that they are harmless kids just expressing themselves, albeit in a rather absurd fashion. The scariest things about Possessed are their outrageous fringes, but the music is absolutely magnificent. Lots of bands who are quite clearly not Satanic have produced great work based on the general themes and ideals.”
While death metal and grindcore’s late-‘90s resurgence appeared modest by commercial standards, the influence the genres left on a new generation of musicians raised on its extremities was greater than anyone could have expected. Having forced its way into popular culture over nearly two decades, the reverberations of the movement could be felt as far as the great corn and pig state of Iowa, where Joey Jordison was raised on rock and commercial thrash metal bands such as Metallica and Megadeth in the college town of Des Moines. At the age of 14, Jordison made the transition from commercial thrash listener to underground death metal obsessive, and didn’t look back for several years to come.
“Basically, death metal, as a musician on my part, it just changed everything, as far as the technicality and where you could take music,” says Jordison, who began playing drums and guitar just a few years before. “Roadrunner Records had an old ad back then that had Sepultura’s Beneath the Remains and Slowly We Rot by Obituary, and that helped me delve into it to where that’s all I did—death metal. And that’s where I learned basically all my skills from the drumming that I do—most of my style comes straight from death metal.”
Still, living in the musical nothingland of Des Moines, Jordison found it difficult locating records from death metal and grindcore bands in local retail stores. Moreover, the thought of his favorite bands coming to his hometown seemed even more unlikely. The young teen took matters into his own hands with the help of a willing local rock club called Hairy Mary’s.
“This is how desperate I was to get death metal into fucking Des Moines, Iowa—I started booking shows,” says Jordison. “I brought in Unleashed, Broken Hope, Cannibal Corpse, Entombed, Sinister and Cynic. At the time, I was in school, and I couldn’t go out of state. And I was losing shitloads of money, working my fucking ass off at a local music store just to make enough money to then bring in these bands that had guarantees and tour riders. But that’s how I got to see it, by just bringing it into Des Moines.”
Jordison’s thrash metal act Modifidious opened for the majority of the death metal bands he helped bring to town. “It was more just traditional thrash,” says the drummer, “very dated sounding at that time, because at that time thrash was so dead and death metal was getting big.”
Soon, however, Jordison moved on to heavier and faster sounds. First joining underground Minneapolis-based grindcore provocateurs Anal Blast on drums before starting his own death metal band, the short-lived Body Pit with Des Moines friends Paul Gray and the Immolation-tattoo-sporting death metal head Mick Thompson. During the same period, Jordison fashioned another band with Gray and Thompson they christened Slipknot. In its earliest incarnation from September of 1995, Slipknot’s predominant stylistic focus was nü metal, the amalgamation of down-tuned heavy metal thunder, hip-hop groove and pop hooks that genre flagship bands such as Korn and Limp Bizkit helped popularize, packing arenas across the globe just two years later.
By then, Slipknot had crafted an elaborate image as a nine-piece, mask and boiler suit-wearing modern metal outfit. But more importantly, the band infused their music with strong influences from the death metal and grindcore records that shaped Jordison’s youth. That provided enough attraction for former death metal powerhouse Roadrunner Records, which signed the band in late 1997. Despite its overtly aggressive nature, the band’s self-titled label debut, released two years later, netted Roadrunner their first platinum release before going on to sell over two million copies in the United States alone.
Such commercial success placed Slipknot in an awkward position. Although their occasional pop hooks and sometimes traditionally sung vocal lines immediately disqualified the group from the death metal faction, Slipknot’s members—most notably Jordison—took every opportunity to express their fondness of the genre whenever the topic would surface during interviews. When the group released their third full-length LP, 2001’s Iowa, it debuted at #3 on the Billboard album charts, despite boasting a few measures of blast beats and double bass drumming in addition to vocalist Corey Taylor’s deep, death metal-inspired growls.
“When Iowa came out, it was basically the heaviest album that’s ever charted that high,” says Jordison. “I was very proud of how heavy it was and how uncompromising [it was]. It wasn’t watered down like a lot of metal is.
“People lump us into the nü metal category, and there might be a hint of that stuff, but if you really listen to a nü metal band and then listen to Slipknot, it’s so apples and oranges that it’s retarded,” Jordison continues. “People just sometimes need to realize that, and that’s what we’re trying to do. The way I play drums is straight fucking grindcore and death metal, with a little bit more of the rock back-beat that we do. I like to think that our influences will shine through the music, even though it’s not strictly death metal. But it definitely plays a huge card in the way that we write songs, and me, for just the way that I play.”
Some underground
fans, however, interpreted such constant championing as an attempt to gain credibility from fans of extreme music. Slipknot’s public praise even raised eyebrows from former members of grindcore progenitors Napalm Death.
“The first time I read a Slipknot interview, they credited Napalm Death and Godflesh as big influences, and I just thought, ‘That’s hilarious,’” says ex-Napalm and Godflesh guitarist Justin Broadrick. “I’m walking around the local village I live in, with little, tiny kids walking around with baggy pants and Slipknot tops, throwing me an evil stare. And I’m looking at them thinking, ‘You fuckwits wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for some of the shit I did.’ I don’t wanna be so egotistical or self-celebratory, but that’s the fact.”
“I would have thought some of those kids were listening to Napalm,” seconds former Napalm drummer Mick Harris. “Certainly, the Americans are more into the hip-hop thing than the British side. And the whole nü metal thing, it’s an amalgamation of everything—your Godflesh is there, your Napalm, your Carcass. They’re just doing their new friendly pop version, which is musically very sad, I’m sorry to say. It does absolutely nothing for me. I look for extreme. I look for something that’s pushing. They’re pushing nothing. The only thing they’re pushing is big bank accounts from making very, very dross music.”
“Out of all the nü metal movement, we are by fucking far the most extreme band there is,” says Jordison. “There is nothing whatsoever friendly about Slipknot. Corey may have a singing voice, but it’s always been done with so much passion that it’s always been brutal.”
Despite detractors, there are clearly even more death metal and grindcore musicians—past and present—firmly in Slipknot’s camp.
“Slipknot’s totally a death metal band—all the elements are there,” says former Morbid Angel bassist/vocalist David Vincent. “They don’t call themselves death metal, but I’m very impressed with them.”
“To me,” says Vincent’s former Morbid Angel bandmate, Erik Rutan, “the natural transition from death metal to the mainstream are Slipknot. A commercial metal band like that—it’s a lot heavier than Nirvana or the alternative movement.”
“If you listen to their music, there are many elements of death metal in there,” explains Immolation frontman Ross Dolan. “There’s the blast. There’s the down-tuned guitars. There’s the vocals. And I think little by little, with bands like Slipknot mentioning bands like us, I think the little things like that will help. It may not boost any of us to that level, but it’s definitely gonna turn some heads and maybe get some kids interested in this type of music. I think a lot of kids that are into Slipknot would be into this type of music. A lot of kids just don’t know this exists.”
But when it comes to backing their words with action, Slipknot have often been thwarted. To date, Swedish post-death metallers In Flames are the only group in any way affiliated with death metal that Slipknot have taken on the road as a supporting act, while the multiplatinum thrash act Pantera took Morbid Angel on a pair of 10,000-seat-arena tours in the spring and summer of 2001.
“That’s all thanks to [former Pantera vocalist] Phil Anselmo,” enthuses Morbid Angel guitarist Trey Azagthoth. “No doubt, it’s all him. I mean, of course, the other guys in Pantera were very cool and they weren’t rebuking us, but Phil, he really likes Morbid Angel and really wanted to have us be on a tour with them, and it was just wonderful that we were able to do it. He did everything he could to get us on there when everything was against him, because that’s not the way things work at that level—bands can’t say, ‘I just wanna bring my friends or this cool underground band on this huge tour who’s not gonna buy their way on.’ So he was really an absolute paradigm shifter.”
“We had problems for a couple of years, but now we’re under different management,” says Jordison of Slipknot’s inability to showcase more extreme talent. “Now we have a little bit more control over the bands that we’re gonna be able to take out. So we’ll try to do even more bands like that.”
Perhaps more apparent is the clear influence Slipknot have exerted on extreme metal bands, such as the aforementioned In Flames and fellow Swedish death metallers Hypocrisy.
“[Hypocrisy founder] Peter Tägtgren told me how much of an influence Slipknot played on [Hypocrisy’s 2002 record] Catch 22—that freaked me out,” states Jordison. “Nothing is better than giving something back to the music community that meant so much to me when I was growing up. Fuck any of the money, and any of that, what it really comes down to is giving something back. Those are my fucking heroes. It’s so awesome, man. And I think the reason these death metal musicians are fans of Slipknot is because they can tell directly listening to our shit how much death metal’s influenced our music.”
While bands such as Slipknot are crucial to death metal’s survival and evolution, groups that further push the genre’s perceived boundaries of extremity, such as Hate Eternal and Nile, are just as essential.
“The musical form has developed, and people have been taking it seriously for long enough that there is a fair standard of musicianship nowadays, whereas back in the early days, bands could barely play,” says Nile founder Karl Sanders of death metal’s technical progression. “They were experimenting with music forms they couldn’t quite get yet. Listen to a death metal record made in 1988 compared to one made now, not only have they figured out how to make death metal records, but the people playing it have figured out how to genuinely play that kinda music.”
“I know I’m helping the movement,” says Hate Eternal founder and guitarist/ vocalist Erik Rutan. “Us and newer bands like Nile are pushing the envelope and making awareness with new death metal. But we’re also waking people up to the fact that death metal is just constantly getting more brutal. And that, to me, is fucking exciting. I mean, I love when I listen to new bands just pushing the envelope to a whole new level. And to me, it sparks people’s interest when you’ve got newer bands creating styles of music that are totally rooted in traditional death metal, but yet so elaborate and expanded; to me, that’s exciting, that’s what keeps me going too.
“By now,” he continues, “most people would have retired, for sure. But I haven’t reached a peak. I’m not even close to my peak yet. Not until I do ten Hate Eternal records, man. That’s the goal. And then after that, I can reassess what the fuck I’m doing, but until that point, I’m on a mission. You can’t get rid of me. You’d have to kill me, because I love death metal, and I’m gonna be playing this music for a long time, until I just can’t play it anymore.”
Though its players rarely discuss it, there is indeed a limit to how long they can physically withstand the rigors of writing and performing extreme music. In 2000, Nile’s original drummer Pete Hammoura was forced into early retirement due to a severe shoulder injury he sustained playing Nile’s outrageously fast beats. According to Sanders, such physical side effects are fairly common in death metal and grindcore musicians.
“I try to practice out on tour with warm-ups every day, but there are some days when I’m playing in pain,” admits the guitarist, who in his early 40s is one of the genre’s oldest musicians. “There are some days that even if I’m not playing guitar, all of a sudden I have these horrible pains in my wrists for absolutely no reason. It’s like a knife going through my wrists, and then it goes away. So I don’t know that I’m any more invulnerable to the wear and tear that it takes to play death metal. I think most people my age playing death metal have already retired from active touring. Certainly there is some toll extracted by the metal gods for those who wish to follow in their steps. People kinda take it for granted that you can go out on tour and play music like this forever. You can’t. There’s a cost. The cost is physical.”
Though still operating well below even death metal’s commercial radar, the grindcore movement continues to exist in small pockets throughout the world. Fiercely political and deeply personal, no band embodies the genre’s original ethos better than Sweden’s Nasum.
“You can hardly make a living out of playing grindcore, like you can by playing death metal,” says Nasum drummer and founding member Anders Jakobson. “Grindcore is not popular in comparison. But on the other hand, I think that the grindcore bands that are around are really cool and healthy in their own way.”
With essential new bands like Pig Destroyer and Soilent Green blasting through the underground, that may well be true. But ultimately, grindcore’s stringent musical formula has denied the genre even the slight creative evolution that death metal has enjoyed.
“There are drums, there are guitars, there is bass, there are vocals,” Jakobson points out, “and as soon as you expand that formula with keyboards or strange instruments, you are drifting away from grindcore. Drum machines are not grindcore. I hope that we will see the return of true grindcore bands in the future, but I don’t want to sound like an extreme, one-vision grindcore freak, because I really like some of the more experimental stuff as well.”
From that end of the spectrum, there’s Scott Hull, guitarist of the drum machine-propelled Agoraphobic Nosebleed and the more traditional grinding outfit Pig Destroyer.
“The big grind bands that are out there are more hybridizations of grind and metal, or grind and hardcore,” says Hull, who formed Agoraphobic in 1994 and then Pig Destroyer in 1997. “My bands are not excluded from this. Both Pig Destroyer and, to a lesser extent, Agoraphobic Nosebleed are both moving towards the metal end of the spectrum. I imagine in the future, grindcore will eventually become a mostly inactive nostalgia genre, much like the crossover thrash shit from the mid-‘80s. People will seek out polished reissues on big labels and original pressings, which will command a pretty penny on eBay.
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