13 (x2) UNDERRATED DEATH METAL ALBUMS (OF THE 21ST CENTURY) PART 1
Death is only the beginning.
Okay, fine, here it is! Not only have you lovely people become quite attached to this feature, but you have vocally made it known that after doing black metal and doom, I simply had to do death metal. I mean, I agree, but as you know, The Devil’s Mouth isn’t only about metal, so I wanted to explore a little bit more, which happened with the third and fourth volumes, where I did noise rock and singer/songwriters. But yeah, of course the genre of all genres when it comes to extreme music needed to be given a whirl and a shake and see what unsung gems fell out. As I expected, a great many did - I didn’t call it the “genre of all genres” of extreme music just now for nothing. I’m not comparing genres competitively or anything stupid like that, don’t get me wrong, but I do feel that death metal is sort of the staple of the general characteristics which define what “extreme music” really is. If you ask someone with no idea of heavy music at all what they imagine extreme metal to be like, they will describe you something close to death metal in most cases - the guttural vocals, the typical blood and gore themes, the relentless brutality. Death metal is like the dank basement of heavy music where all the ugly stuff trickles down to, and I say this in the most endearing form possible.
Being such a basic foundation, it is natural that it is one of the most explored and expanded genres ever too. You can line up all the existing death metal records in a playlist, start now, and your whole lifetime won’t be enough to go through everything. And of course, there is a lot of generic, unimaginative, by-the-numbers stuff, in every subcategory of death metal, so much more than in most other styles. Which, during the course of the elaboration of this list, led me to two decisions: a) just like black metal, because I feel the genre’s decisive decade (the ‘90s) has been explored to death, no pun intended, and every “cult classic” unearthed and talked about, including in literature, on famous tomes such as Albert Mudrian’s ‘Choosing Death’ or Daniel Ekeroth’s ‘Swedish Death Metal’ to mention just two. I mean, I just wrote a huge Hall of Fame feature for Decibel magazine about Gorement’s ‘The Ending Quest’, can you believe that? I therefore limited the list to 21st century releases only once again, and b) because even so there is such a quantity of stuff I think deserves a mention, there will be TWO death metal volumes, so you’re getting 13x2 underrated albums!
So, applying the same basic principles of all the other volumes of this feature we did, here is the first part of the death metal underrated bunch, the first 13. It is ordered alphabetically by band name, so this is the A-E part.
Aeviterne
The Ailing Facade
(Profound Lore Records)
2022
Obviously the general idea of zombies and gore and stuff like that is the norm for death metal, and that’s what I used jokingly for the illustration of the article and everything, but as the genre has evolved, bands started realising that you can apply death metal to everything - outer space, satanism, quantum physics, philosophy, you name it - instead of just going deeper into medical vocabulary or crazy profanity, and it will still work. Perhaps the biggest death metal-adjacent band right now, Blood Incantation, is a great example of this. I’m going on this tangent because on Aeviterne’s page over at The Metal Archives, it says “Existentialism, Nihilism, Poetry” on the lyrical themes section (which is kinda accurate, in fact) and I found that adorable for a death metal band. But Aeviterne are very much death metal, yes, they’re actually made of four dudes with very clear ties to the New York scene (including Samuel Smith, bassist for the fantastic Artificial Brain, here on guitars), though they are of course far from typical, and not just in the lyrical approach department. Theirs is a dissonant and complex take on the style, and while it never really strays too much to be considered anything else other than death metal, the atmospheres created by the electronic and industrial elements, subtly weaved into the whole ensemble, give the record an alien, twisted vibe all of its own. They strike a perfect balance between cold, calculated cruelty and organic, visceral anger - mechanised, but not mechanic, piloted by a ruthless hand, but never on auto-pilot. This being a-band-with-guys-from-other-bands, it might go down as so many others (many of them in this list, unfortunately!) and ‘The Ailing Facade’ remain their only blip in the death metal radar, destined to end up on overlooked gems lists such as this one. Hopefully they will realise they have something really special here and find a way to give it some continuity.
Bastard Priest
Under The Hammer Of Destruction
(Blood Harvest)
2010
As crucial as the Swedish HM-2-led revolution was for the growth and branching out of death metal, today’s bands of that school of sound, especially the ones from Sweden itself, find themselves in a bit of a conundrum - either you go down the, say, Entrails path and admit you’re a fun Entombed/Nihilist clone and get on with it (and hey, that’s fine), or you'll try to actually do something new and truly yours, which is admittedly difficult given the characteristics of this specific genre path. A select few have managed to do it, like the much-missed Morbus Chron for instance, who ended up blending the Swedish sound, Voivod and Autopsy into one big awesome mix, but that’s the way to do it if you want to be original. Not to say with this big rant that Bastard Priest are the most original band in the world, which they are not, but they are one of the few who have managed to inject some life (or, erm, some death?) into the old Stockholm horse along the way. The Swedish death thing is so good - one of the less exhaustible subcategories of extreme metal, don’t you agree? - that I believe our enjoyment of it will be eternal, but it does need a good kick in the nuts to keep going fresh now and then. With a kind of songwriting much more steeped into punk than what is usual for this sort of thing, with an enthusiastic old school flair but not showing a desperate need to specifically sound like any of the old classics, Bastard Priest ended up becoming what Death Breath really should have been like (except with a tenth of the overall praise) if that band didn’t feel so “constructed” - a devil-may-care, loose cannon of good old punked up Swedish death metal. It’s a damn shame the Matt Mendoza / Inventor duo entered a long hiatus after their follow-up to this killer debut, the almost equally killer ‘Ghouls Of The Endless Night’ in 2011, but hey, the two-song digital EP ‘Doomed To Decay’ from last October seems to indicate they are back (even if they had already teased us with another little EP in 2020), so fingers crossed for a proper third album.
Bedsore
Hypnagogic Hallucinations
(20 Buck Spin)
2020
One of the reasons why death metal has been such an enduring and constantly renewable success story ever since Possessed or Death (or whomever you think was the first, I’m not getting anywhere near that can of worms) first puked it into the metal world is its great adaptability. You can go full on prog/experimental/weird with it, or you can go total primitive caveman, or anything in between, and it will still be very much death metal. Hell, the great pioneers Death themselves went through both phases over the course of their career/Chuck’s life. The first two records on this list, actually - and inadvertently, since we’re doing it alphabetically -, are also good examples of the two extremes in the approach. Bedsore, who hail from Rome, lean heavily towards the elaborately progressive side, injecting great doses of psychedelia and intricacy into their songs. The biggest challenge for a band like this is to maintain the ferocious intensity that is essential to death metal all while noodling around being all ethereal and shit. In a similar manner to the aforementioned Morbus Chron, Bedsore really nail that balance, coming across sometimes as a sort of time-refined version of ‘Human’-era Death. They apply extraordinary loud/quiet dynamics worthy of the best post-rock to the songwriting, so they are able to extend your gaze to the stars but also to chug it out as if a fat zombie is on your tail, all of it usually in the same song. Last year’s ‘Dreaming The Strife For Love’ was a perfect continuation of this debut, taking all of these elements and running even further with them, so why Bedsore aren’t at the top of the genre right now touring the whole world is a mystery to me.
Diskord
Degenerations
(Transcending Obscurity)
2021
Ever since Diskord appeared, they have been weirding it out, twisting death metal into shapes we didn’t even know could exist, all through their D-titled albums (2007’s ‘Doomscapes’, 2012’s ‘Dystopics’ and this gem here). It’s as if each release is seen by them as a challenge to go even more dissonant and wildly unpredictable. They are still very much death metal in the way that Voivod are still very much thrash, but their inventiveness goes far beyond any notion of genre or any other kind of musical limitation. As with all the best bands of this sort, that doesn’t mean that ‘Degenerations’ doesn’t slay - it totally does, especially in shorter ragers like ‘Atoms Decay’, but there are so many twists and turns packed into all of these songs that headbanging to them might lead to serious spinal injuries. You’ll still want to though, both on the doomier, dense parts and on the faster rippers. Regardless of what your choice of death metal style is - and even you people on the other side of the genre-pond listening to Meshuggah and stuff like that -, you need to give Diskord a spin.
Capharnaum
Fractured
(Willowtip Records)
2004
Formed in 1993 with Jason Suecof (very well known nowadays for his production work with various bands) as guitarist and main focal point, Capharnaum coughed up an excellent 1997 debut, ‘Reality Only Fantasized’, and called it quits when half the band moved to Florida shortly after. However, Jason and his drummer brother Jordan managed to bring the old beast back to life for just one more round, reshaping the lineup and carrying it through one last record, this awesome little thing here. Interestingly enough, that new lineup contained a few faces that are much more popular today than back then - namely Matt Heafy on vocals, fresh off releasing Trivium’s very first album in 2003, and a certain Daniel Mongrain, who would become our beloved Chewy a few years later, the only man capable or replacing the irreplaceable Piggy in Voivod (and yes, I promise to try and stop bringing them up on just about every entry on this list from now on!). That little bunch alone (just add well-traveled bassist Michael Poggione, of Monstrosity plus a million other bands, to complete it) should give you an approximate idea of how ‘Fractured’ sounds if you haven’t heard it before - if you’re thinking technical, cerebral death metal, you’re absolutely right, but the trick lies in the way these twisted riffs also make these songs sound grimy and putrid despite the agility and technical prowess of their performers. Because of that, it’s an album that has aged remarkably well, and blasting it today really leaves a tantalising “what if” in the air - in another reality where these people didn’t go out and do other successful stuff that didn’t leave them any time for keeping Capharnaum alive, I’m sure they’d be one of the genre’s biggest bands today.
Cerekloth
In The Midst Of Life We Are In Death
(Hells Headbangers Records)
2013
When Marcellus says that something is rotten in the state of Denmark in Act I of ‘Hamlet’, I don’t believe old William S. had included in all the foreshadowing that line implies that the country would be one of the finest purveyors of death metal a good few hundred years later, and yet here we are - not only have some important bands in the genre come out of there throughout the years (although funnily enough there’s not really a “personality”, something like a “Danish sound”, but that’s a conversation for another time), but it’s also the home of Kill-Town Death Fest, one of DM’s most essential international gatherings. Copenhagen’s Cerekloth aren’t one of the most lauded Danish products, and it doesn’t help that this is the only album they put out during their relatively short existence (2008-2013), but they can nevertheless claim to have left behind a uniquely timeless beast. A culmination of the potential shown in their two previous EPs, ‘Pandemonium Prayers’ and ‘Halo Of Syringes’, ‘In The Midst…’ is an album that knows how to take its time. Like a predator with its fangs firmly inserted in your flesh, it paces itself, delivering methodical blows while it drags you through the mud for its sole pleasure. While never veering into the realm of doom/death, Cerekloth are purposeful in their slow to mid-paced attack, injecting both Autopsy-like melodies and subtle aggression as needed so you neve lose your firm attention. The songs take however long they have to, from three to seven minutes if need be, and they never lose their bite, their menace and their brooding, confident quality.
Chiaroschuro
Chiaroschuro
(Unholy Anarchy Records)
2025
I really don’t want these 13 Underrated features to be a nostalgia trip or a look to the past only, as I firmly believe the genres I cover with them are still very much alive and relevant today, so here’s a record that came out on March 28th this year. It would have surely made it into the respective edition of The Devil’s Month had I been aware of it at the time, but at least now I get to correct the omission here. I think it’s fair to say they still belong in the “underrated” category since I haven’t seen them in any magazine covers or any of the big websites, but they surely deserve it and I hope they make it. A duo out of Baltimore, Chiaroscuro consist of Nick Temoshok on guitars and drum programming and Cassiopeia on vocals, and while I don’t want to take anything away from Nick’s tremendous instrumental work (or guest bassist and drummer for this album Ben Baris and Adam Smith either), it is the frontwoman’s incendiary vocal performance that will really captivate you on the first listens. She sounds wild, loose and just fucking awesome in every song, a wide range that goes from demonic shrieks to cavernous gutturals always hitting the right spot and amplifying the music tremendously - the last ten seconds of opener ‘Sunbeat’ alone are enough to give you nightmares for weeks. It does help that the music is amazing too, of course. Though only a fifteen-minute, four-song EP, the songs are strong enough for it to feel like a proper album already, and the replay value is immense. Melodic, catchy, intense, mad brutal, it’s got everything. Go listen to the thing and help get these people off future underrated lists right now.
convulsing
perdurance
(Avantgarde Music / Total Dissonance Worship)
2024
One of the very best death metal bands/projects to appear in any century, convulsing are the work of master Brendan Sloan (Altars, Dumbsaint) alone, and should be on everyone’s top priority list of discoveries if you haven’t come across them yet. Imagine, if you will, a Ved Buens Ende of this century, with a bigger shift towards death metal than the Norwegian black metal at the base of those legends, and you’re somewhat in the right ballpark already. Or make up your own comparison with anyone within that very particular headspace, from Blut Aus Nord to Gorguts, and you should arrive similarly close to the outcome, simply through another twisted path. Dissonance, disorientation, absolute psychological horror, a disregard for genre lines, plus a voice capable of transmitting in various ways all the horror and trauma that seems to lie deep beneath the surface of this music - that is what you can expect from a convulsing record. I picked ‘perdurance’ out of mere convenience of being the most recent one, 2016’s ‘Errata’ and 2018’s ‘Grievous’ are equally worthy of appearing here - though quite individual pieces, they clearly belong within the same continuum. Unfettered, unbridled genius that should be one day held up in the same regard as the other names mentioned in this blurb.
Deathchain
Cult Of Death
(Dynamic Arts Records)
2007
A refreshingly simple and straightforward beast, this one. While I have the tendency to go for the unusual and more out-there original kind of thing in every genre, as you might have noticed if you’ve read my stuff for more than half a post, there is a great charm in doing the regular thing very well too. A very tasty plate of meat and potatoes is as good as your experimental fusion meal if it’s done right and with the proper amount of love, and that’s what ‘Cult Of Death’ really is. Sure, “love” isn’t the first word that pops to mind when listening to ditties such as the thrashing ‘Deathammer’ or the colossal ‘Serpent Of The Deep’, but these tunes were surely belched out with the greatest devotion for true death metal that you can imagine. Strong, razor-sharp riffs, a proper deep growl that is still fully understandable (man, I love an expressive death metal vocalist), and actual death metal subjects being dealt with in songs like ‘Necrophiliac Lust’, ‘Pit Of The Possessed’ or ‘Witchstorm’. I’ve read a few reviews calling this album “boring”, and each to their own, but I really think that’s missing the point. To me, it’s from start to finish a firm and exciting reminder of why I fell in love with death metal in the first place - unpretentious, unashamedly brutal and a whole lot of fun.
Deathevokation
The Chalice Of Ages
(Xtreem Music)
2007
Another in the line of one-awesome-album-and-then-nothing, which seems particularly fertile within death metal. What is it? Is it some pact that you people do with death, or the devil, or Cthulhu or whatever, and then you are forbidden to continue? At least Deathevokation are still around, and they’ve mentioned recently on their social media that there is already an unreleased new album - they’ve played a couple of new songs live and even released one of them, ‘Black Blood’, through a Decibel flexi - but so far nothing has materialised. With fingers crossed upside down, of course, we’ll patiently wait as if eighteen fucking years haven’t gone by since ‘The Chalice Of Ages’ and just listen to this damn perfect record over and over again. I mean, it’s not like that’s such a band thing - as you would expect from people who named their band after a song on a Dismember demo, Deathevokation just have a knack for getting death metal right. It sounds as much Stockholm as Gothenburg, as Coventry (by which I mean Bolt Thrower) as Florida, yet never once it sounds all over the place like that description makes it sound. It’s like a manual for how to make death metal properly by taking the best out of each one of its scenes. Every element, the crunch, the melody, the brutality, the chug, the instantly memorable riffing, everything is there, executed with passion, personality and poise. How is this band not ruling the world right now?
Defacement
Defacement
(I, Voidhanger Records)
2021
I love Defacement so much that it was down to artwork when I was trying to pick which of their records to feature here. A truly international band, composed of two Libyan musicians living in Germany, an Italian drummer and a Dutch guitarist, they sort of emerged from the ashes of their former black metal band, Deathcrush, and became this frightening entity, as if they dropped a bucket full of death metal on top of what they did before, coming up with a deeply haunting, intimidating hybrid. It’s not the easiest band to get into, I have to warn you. The density of the sound is almost impenetrable and Forsaken Ahmed’s vocals are deep - and when I say deep, I mean really fucking deep, like if a Balrog just awoke a hundred miles underneath your house and its pulsating roar is just now beginning to reach you before you are mercilessly obliterated in the next few seconds. But density doesn’t mean murkiness - as repeated listens progressively lift the veil of gloom, you will recognise the many riches lying just beyond the grime. When that click happens, however, it’s a beautiful thing. What once felt like an unapproachable pile of festering ugliness, now reveals itself like the splitting of a chrysalis and can even be called beautiful and emotional. And just so you know, the same kind of magic happens with 2019’s ‘Deviant’ and 2024’s ‘Duality’ - as I said, ‘Defacement’ came out on top purely for artwork reasons. How I actually like to listen to Defacement is to ruin an afternoon and play all three in one go as if they’re one big two hour tunnel to go through. Not for everyone, but immense rewards await if you happen to be one of the chosen.
Dream Unending
Tide Turns Eternal
(20 Buck Spin)
2021
I really thought Dream Unending would be one of the next big things in not only death metal, but heavy music as a whole, when I heard this album for the first time. I believe I even wrote it on a review somewhere. I mean, they can still be, and it’s not like they don’t have a following, but I really wonder how much more will it take, after two basically perfect albums like this and its 2022 follow-up ‘Song Of Salvation’. Far from your typical death metal, or even doom/death, this partnership between two brilliant musicians, Justin DeTore (Innumerable Forms, Sumerlands and a whole bunch of others, we had a really cool podcast episode with him) and Derrick Vella (Tomb Mold), evokes what feels like a whole new world, something taken out from your most esoteric dreams and made real in sound and image right in front of you. Even the deepest, growliest sections - of which there are quite a few, this is still very much a death metal album - sound positively hazy and meditative. You won’t throw horns at any point during a Dream Unending song, but you will very much retreat into yourself and enter a seriously reflective mood if you let it wash over you. It’s profoundly atmospheric ambient music dressed up as death metal, and for that feat alone, Justin and Derrick would deserve massive recognition. That they are able to turn that exercise into achingly beautiful and deeply evocative music is nothing short of brilliant.
Exhumation
Master's Personae
(Pulverised Records)
2024
Another great thing about death metal is its universality - it’s hard to think of one country, any country, that doesn’t have at least one cool death metal band. Exhumation are from Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and their band name is just about the first and last thing about them that is somewhat unimaginative. ‘Master’s Personae’ is their latest album, the fourth full-length on an already very rich trajectory that started in 2008, and it’s their finest hour so far. Instantly exhilarating, it’s the kind of record that will get you off your chair within the first few seconds no matter what your current mood is. Their excitement and vitality is almost palpable, to an extent that it’s even tempting to add a “thrash” classifier somewhere in there too, but despite this infectious enthusiasm, Exhumation remain very much in control of their noise at all times. The songs are agile and I dare say even technical - I mean, they are, but the hesitation in using that term stems from the fact that they don’t feel like it, and that’s the best way to apply your technicality, in a way, isn’t it? When it feels rough, but you’re actually doing something brilliant, it means that all of it was applied where it matters - in the building of a proper song, of a vibe that gets to you, and these songs really have all that in spades. There’s a tendency to think that “if they were American, they’d be huge!”, but hey, this list is full of equally amazing American bands that never really broke through, so I don’t know. In any case, Exhumation rule. From the fast and loose action of the Kolbotn bands (Obliteration, for instance) to the classic yet inventive feel of someone like Morgoth, Exhumation check all the right boxes. Most importantly, the “fists raised all the time” box.
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One of the best things about Death Metal is that for people who like it, there's a ton of variety that the tourist has no ability to read—I fucking love Death Metal, and know my shit, yet there's always someone telling me about band I don't know (like 2/3rds of this list), and that they've put out like, 10 albums...
Like, I know my personal, but there are many many streams.