It seems YT doesn't like links in comments (I wrote one yesterday and included a link to a page on Metallum, but it never appeared; I waited in case it required manual approval from you or something, but it seems you didn't receive it either). ^^ Just wanted to thank you for this open discussion and for including some of our comments in it, much appreciated. Looking forward to the next one!
@@LairoftheAlchemist I see, glad I double-checked with you, then. I'll just avoid links in the future, then. It's a bit less convenient, but it's not like you need a link to look up a release on Metallum or listen to a song I mention (you're likely to have them in your collection anyways ^^). Thanks.
My question is does anyone know why Chuck never played the song scream bloody gore live. Always wondered that. Also don’t forget that sepultura Bestial devastation has heavy death metal influence and was released in 1985. Mike
I think Scream Bloody Gore is pure death metal ,Possessed is a mix of thrash /first wave black metal with the begginings of what would become death metal but i still consider this just a ultra dark thrash record.
@@joshuascott3428 WTF ever you say . Death was never remotely anything but Thrash Metal, and lighter weight yet with albums like Human. Cookie Monster Vocals over Primus music does not equal Death Metal.
I would say it is in the sense that say "Raw Power" by the Stooges is the first or one or the first punk/ extreme bands. Churches laid the foundation that many would take and work on from there.
I think that Bulldozer The Day of Wrath1984 along with Celtic Frost Morbid Tales 1984 might be right up there with Possessed, who were more thrashier than the first 2. Possessed are important though!
@@meloralovesdarkness2495 Totally agree with Bulldozer, also the Destruction debut EP, At War - Ordered to Kill, Sepultura - Bestiality Invasion, but I think that Kreator - Pleasure to Kill was the closest thing to Death Metal until Cannibal Corpse - Butchered At Birth was released. The first actual Death Metal album.
In terms of the direction Death Metal would take going forwards the influence of Napalm Death's debut Scum in 1987 shouldn't be overlooked. They pretty much popularised the blast beat with that album.
Zeppelin weren't solely and strictly a metal act, but they certainly had their moments where elements of it were very much in evidence. Ditto Deep Purple, Blue Cheer, Thin Lizzy, Uriah Heep and other contemporaries.
Possessed was the first in my opinion. Abominations would have been 2nd had it been released. 3rd in line was Necrophagia Season (which I would take 10x over Scream Bloody Gore). Some say Hellhammer Apoc Raids or early CF but I disagree. Slayer Hell Awaits was also an important precursor.
This matters a lot less than you seem to think. Many artists are bad at evaluating their own works, and their claims aren't needed when we still have access to the works themselves. We should evaluate what a piece of music is or isn't by listening to it, analyzing it and comparing it to contemporary pieces of music. You know, some bands really tried hard to convince people of pretty silly claims over the years. If we believed them, we'd call Motörhead "rock 'n roll", Virgin Steele "barbaric romantic metal", among many other ridiculous cases. It's rarely as mild as one influential band exaggerating their own impact and claiming they invented something they only contributed to. Or a much more influential and successful band being gracious about it in interviews. We're much better off trusting the music itself than what the musicians say about it.
@@legendmaker694 I also consider it the first death metal. It doesn't matter if it still had elements of thrash. Music is an evolution, it's always going to some elements of the genre it grew out of for a while. It was still harsher then it's peers. I've seen people arguing that Scream Bloody Gore isn't death metal because it has thrash in it. No genre springs up out of no where and contains no elements of the genres that influenced it heavy metal didn't just come out of no where, it was an evolution out of hard rock there are people who argue that black Sabbath, Motorhead, Judas Priest, wasp, Motley Crue aren't metal, and they all are. Then there are people who argue that GNR, Ac/DC. Kiss, and Rush are metal, and I dont consider them metal, but their influence is undeniable.
@@Gregbaltzer I completely agree with almost all of the above, which is your own perspective on things in your own words. See, that's much more interesting and useful in this discussion than whatever claims Chuck or Jeff might have made (which was my main point about your previous comment). I don't consider either 'Seven Churches' or 'Scream Bloody Gore' the first death metal album myself, although SBG comes much closer. To me it isn't so much the fact that there's still a lot of thrash in those albums that keeps them from being death metal, it's the fact that there isn't enough death metal elements yet. Especially in the case of Possessed, I don't even agree that it's just a thrash band either: there's a lot of speed metal as well in their debut, and by this I mean the raw, sloppy and dirty type of speed metal that stems from hardcore punk, Motörhead, Venom, HellHammer and so on, not the clean, melodic and intricate type of speed metal that evolved concurrently from the fastest and/or most emotionally charged songs of various hard 'n heavy bands of the 70s like Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, Budgie, Thin Lizzy and especially Rainbow, which eventually evolved and branched out into USPM, prog and power metal. That's why I'm saying that 'Seven Churches' could just as easily be argued to be a part of the so-called "first wave of black metal" as it can be argued to be early proto death metal: it has all of that raw, evil atmosphere and the sloppy, DIY vibes that can also be found in early Bathory, Sodom, Kreator, Sepultura and so on. Ultimately, this leads to Morbid Saint, not Morbid Angel.
@@legendmaker694 "See, that's much more interesting and useful in this discussion than whatever claims Chuck or Jeff might have made" Wow way to be patronising toward him 🤣 can you get more passive-aggressive? I would say to you that it is important what Chuck Schuldiner thought if we're having a discussion about either of these two albums being the first death metal album, because Chuck WAS influenced by Possessed 'Seven Churches' when he made SBG and that is well documented. "Ultimately, this leads to Morbid Saint, not Morbid Angel"- that's a neat line from you but it led to Mantas/Death first! Yes Black metal and blackened thrash bands have been influenced by Possessed 'Seven Churches' as well- that's how influential and important Churches is. I can take this 'death metal with thrashy elements' narrative even further. I think Morbid Angel 'Altars of Madness' has thrashy elements. I think Cannibal Corpse "Eaten Back to Life" has thrashy elements. Are we going to say death metal really started in the 1990s then?
@@jimmycampbell78 Patronizing? Passive-aggressive? That's not what I was going for at all, and even reading my comment again I'm not sure what gave you this impression, honestly. I know my writing style gives some people that vibe, though; it's a misunderstanding I've had time and time again on forums over the years. It depends on what tone of voice (if any) you project on what I wrote as you read it, what assumptions you have about me (if any) and your own preferred style of communication, I guess. If this helps change your perspective a bit: English is not my native language, and even in my native language I couldn't make short and concise points if my life depended on it; that's just how I'm wired. Sorry this gave you that impression, and I hope that's not how Greg read it. I was being honest and serious. I don't agree with any of your points, unfortunately. We know that Mantas/Death and Possessed knew and influenced each other throughout their demo years (along with dozens of other bands through the underground tape-trading circuit); it doesn't make their opinions about each other's releases more relevant. Facts or at least specific anecdotes from them would still be important, like if Chuck said he lifted a certain riff or idea from Possessed, stuff like that (still not to be taken at face value, but relevant to at least check, sure). But just flat and broad opinions such as "they were the first" or "yeah we were death metal" are still just noise. There are countless cases where it's obvious band X picked up things from band Y just by listening to the songs and taking the dates and context into account, whether or not the band members said anything about it (and even sometimes when they swear it's not true). We don't need to read any interview by any party involved to figure out that Mustaine composed a lot more of 'Kill 'em All' than the official credits tell us, for instance; we just need access to the demos and the album. "Yes Black metal and blackened thrash bands have been influenced by Possessed 'Seven Churches' as well- that's how influential and important Churches is." That's just about the opposite of what I said. Possessed were themselves greatly influenced by all these bands, it wasn't a one-way street at all. And they were far from the most influential or innovative from this group of underground bands trying to one-up one another and constantly taking cues from each other in the mid 80s. That's how influential and important the whole "let's push to the extreme" trend was, and 'Seven Churches' was HARDLY a milestone for that at the end of 1985, after the first two Bathory, the debuts and EPs from both Kreator and Destruction, Sodom's debut EP, Slayer's 'Hell Awaits' and many more releases that were on par or more extreme than what Possessed brought to the table in most regards. As I said to Greg in my previous comment, it's not the fact that there are thrash elements that's the problem, it's the lack of death elements. There are definitely a lot more of them on 'Scream Bloody Gore' than on 'Seven Churches', and if pressed I could actually consider that album the starting point of death metal honestly, even if 'Leprosy' went much farther in that direction. The influence Possessed in general had on Death is clear, but so is the influence from other releases, especially considering everything that came up in 1986 in between these two albums. I mean 'Reign in Blood', 'Darkness Descends', 'Obsessed by Cruelty', the first two Sepultura records, 'Pleasure to fucking Kill'... It's crazy how fast things were moving back then. And most of these bands were definitely aware of and influenced by one another, including both Possessed and Death, that's very clear. Just listen to Onslaught's own "Death Metal'" song released 10 months prior to Possessed's and tell me the chorus aren't shockingly similar. 'Power From Hell' was very much relevant to this whole collective evolution, by the way. Just listening to "Angels of Death" right now, and man, besides coming up with titles that would become famous through other bands using them later, their blend of filthy speed/thrash and hardcore punk was right on the money for early '85. While we're at it, to clarify just in case, the term "death metal" was already floating around long before Possessed used it (not unlike "black metal", "power metal" and other terms that bands used kind of randomly long before they became attached to an actual genre of metal). The legendary 1984 'Death Metal' multi-band split album with HellHammer on it (but also Helloween and Running Wild lol) certainly popularized the term, along with a cover artwork that was funnily enough pretty close to what would soon become the norm after the first few big death metal bands really got going. Possessed were firmly on the "black metal" train in that regard, just like they were lyrically and in terms of production values and atmosphere. 'Seven Churches' simply didn't introduce all that much death metal elements that weren't already "meta" for all these bands and their audience by the time it came out, and listening to it now it really sounds like the filthy and sloppy speed/thrash album going for an evil "black metal" vibe the way they knew how at the time, rather than an album that moves away from that and into the death metal direction that we can hear a lot of on Death's debut (and to be fair, quite a bit more on Possessed's own second album released in between than on 'Churches'). There's almost none of these elements on 'Seven Churches': controlled chaos in the song structures, blasting drums, sudden and extreme tempo changes, fast but precise riffing with frequent changes in technique and rhythm, frequent dissonance and/or a chromatic approach, pinched harmonics dive bombs out of the blue, breakdowns, cookie monster growls... The latter was also largely missing from Death's repertoire, as I already brought up, and to be fair the vocal style and sound is easily the one thing that's the most strikingly similar between the two bands' early releases. I'm listening to Possessed's 'Beyond the Gates' right now and it's uncanny how much the vocals are similar to Chuck's on Death's debut. Someone who never heard either albums could easily believe it's the same vocalist. But that vocal style was much closer to hardcore punk and some thrash bands without a capable singer than it was to what would soon become the typical death metal growl. Chuck's demented performance on 'Leprosy' is as close to DM growls as either band would ever get, before he evolved into his signature helium shrieks with a ton of natural distortion for the rest of his career. In contrast, Jeff very much kept the same style for the rest of Possessed's career, the far less interesting or genre-specific "I'm pissed off but I ain't got no pipes to express it convincingly'" vocal style of lesser thrash bands that they both started out as.
It depends on how you want to critique this. Does Seven Churches have Death metal elements. Yes. Is it more of a bridge between dark thrash towards Death metal. Yes. Is scream bloody gore the first full on Death metal record. Yup. This is always where the argument lies. The first record with Death metal elements or the first record that is full on Death metal.
Possessed and Death were too accessible to average Metal fans to be actually considered Death Metal. Cannibal Corpse - Butchered At Birth was the first album that was actually Death Metal, as in any track off the album would stick out like a sore thumb on a Metal compilation tape. The Vocals are much more guttural, the song titles are 100% Grotesque Graphic Gore. Butchered At Birth was the first actual complete Death Metal album. Death, Napalm Death, Possessed, Morbid Angel, and Carcass were to Butchered At Birth what Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Nazareth, Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Budgie were to Judas Priest - Sad Wings of Destiny. Just like Judas Priest, Cannibal Corpse 's debut album was not subgenre defining. Rocka Rolla was Psych Rock, and Eaten Back to Life was Thrash Metal like Altars of Madness, Leprosy Scream Bloody Gore, Spiritual Healing, Symphonies of Sickness etc. Butchered At Birth sounds like nothing prior, but almost every subsequent 'Death Metal ' released after had the similar Exaggerated Cookie Monster growl in a Devil Voice style. Even popular acts like Deicide and Morbid Angel changed Vocal styles after Butchered At Birth. If you listen to nearly anything released post Butchered At Birth went to a more guttural Vocal style, and upped the ante on Gore , Satanism, or whatever lyrical topics the bands chose as their gimmick. Butchered At Birth definitely pushed the envelope, and became a challenge for bands to attempt to surpass.
Just saw them on tour with Testament and Kreator a couple weeks ago. Jeff is certainly one of the legends in metal and still sounds great.
It seems YT doesn't like links in comments (I wrote one yesterday and included a link to a page on Metallum, but it never appeared; I waited in case it required manual approval from you or something, but it seems you didn't receive it either). ^^ Just wanted to thank you for this open discussion and for including some of our comments in it, much appreciated. Looking forward to the next one!
Thanks and yeah, I haven't seen anything being held for review. UA-cam is rather strict about comments with links.
@@LairoftheAlchemist I see, glad I double-checked with you, then. I'll just avoid links in the future, then. It's a bit less convenient, but it's not like you need a link to look up a release on Metallum or listen to a song I mention (you're likely to have them in your collection anyways ^^). Thanks.
My question is does anyone know why Chuck never played the song scream bloody gore live. Always wondered that. Also don’t forget that sepultura Bestial devastation has heavy death metal influence and was released in 1985. Mike
It’s Scream Bloody Gore. This is close to DM but it isn’t fully there
MUTILATION, MUTILATION, MUTILATION🗣️🔥‼️
I think Scream Bloody Gore is pure death metal ,Possessed is a mix of thrash /first wave black metal with the begginings of what would become death metal but i still consider this just a ultra dark thrash record.
Seven Churches is a lot more Death Metal than Scream Bloody Gore
@@Hecatecrossways Thats just objectively false
@@joshuascott3428 WTF ever you say . Death was never remotely anything but Thrash Metal, and lighter weight yet with albums like Human. Cookie Monster Vocals over Primus music does not equal Death Metal.
I would say it is in the sense that say "Raw Power" by the Stooges is the first or one or the first punk/ extreme bands. Churches laid the foundation that many would take and work on from there.
I agree
I think that Bulldozer The Day of Wrath1984 along with Celtic Frost Morbid Tales 1984 might be right up there with Possessed, who were more thrashier than the first 2. Possessed are important though!
I agree
@@meloralovesdarkness2495 Totally agree with Bulldozer, also the Destruction debut EP, At War - Ordered to Kill, Sepultura - Bestiality Invasion, but I think that Kreator - Pleasure to Kill was the closest thing to Death Metal until Cannibal Corpse - Butchered At Birth was released. The first actual Death Metal album.
In terms of the direction Death Metal would take going forwards the influence of Napalm Death's debut Scum in 1987 shouldn't be overlooked. They pretty much popularised the blast beat with that album.
Napalm Death is very important in the discussion for sure.
Zeppelin weren't solely and strictly a metal act, but they certainly had their moments where elements of it were very much in evidence. Ditto Deep Purple, Blue Cheer, Thin Lizzy, Uriah Heep and other contemporaries.
I agree
Possessed was the first in my opinion. Abominations would have been 2nd had it been released. 3rd in line was Necrophagia Season (which I would take 10x over Scream Bloody Gore). Some say Hellhammer Apoc Raids or early CF but I disagree. Slayer Hell Awaits was also an important precursor.
Actually, Necrophagia was the first. Season of the Dead beat Scream Bloody Gore by a few months.
Chuck and Kam both said that Possessed was first. Jeff, of Possessed, also said that Possessed is Death Metal.
This matters a lot less than you seem to think. Many artists are bad at evaluating their own works, and their claims aren't needed when we still have access to the works themselves. We should evaluate what a piece of music is or isn't by listening to it, analyzing it and comparing it to contemporary pieces of music. You know, some bands really tried hard to convince people of pretty silly claims over the years. If we believed them, we'd call Motörhead "rock 'n roll", Virgin Steele "barbaric romantic metal", among many other ridiculous cases. It's rarely as mild as one influential band exaggerating their own impact and claiming they invented something they only contributed to. Or a much more influential and successful band being gracious about it in interviews. We're much better off trusting the music itself than what the musicians say about it.
@@legendmaker694 I also consider it the first death metal. It doesn't matter if it still had elements of thrash. Music is an evolution, it's always going to some elements of the genre it grew out of for a while. It was still harsher then it's peers. I've seen people arguing that Scream Bloody Gore isn't death metal because it has thrash in it. No genre springs up out of no where and contains no elements of the genres that influenced it heavy metal didn't just come out of no where, it was an evolution out of hard rock there are people who argue that black Sabbath, Motorhead, Judas Priest, wasp, Motley Crue aren't metal, and they all are. Then there are people who argue that GNR, Ac/DC. Kiss, and Rush are metal, and I dont consider them metal, but their influence is undeniable.
@@Gregbaltzer I completely agree with almost all of the above, which is your own perspective on things in your own words. See, that's much more interesting and useful in this discussion than whatever claims Chuck or Jeff might have made (which was my main point about your previous comment).
I don't consider either 'Seven Churches' or 'Scream Bloody Gore' the first death metal album myself, although SBG comes much closer. To me it isn't so much the fact that there's still a lot of thrash in those albums that keeps them from being death metal, it's the fact that there isn't enough death metal elements yet. Especially in the case of Possessed, I don't even agree that it's just a thrash band either: there's a lot of speed metal as well in their debut, and by this I mean the raw, sloppy and dirty type of speed metal that stems from hardcore punk, Motörhead, Venom, HellHammer and so on, not the clean, melodic and intricate type of speed metal that evolved concurrently from the fastest and/or most emotionally charged songs of various hard 'n heavy bands of the 70s like Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, Budgie, Thin Lizzy and especially Rainbow, which eventually evolved and branched out into USPM, prog and power metal. That's why I'm saying that 'Seven Churches' could just as easily be argued to be a part of the so-called "first wave of black metal" as it can be argued to be early proto death metal: it has all of that raw, evil atmosphere and the sloppy, DIY vibes that can also be found in early Bathory, Sodom, Kreator, Sepultura and so on. Ultimately, this leads to Morbid Saint, not Morbid Angel.
@@legendmaker694 "See, that's much more interesting and useful in this discussion than whatever claims Chuck or Jeff might have made" Wow way to be patronising toward him 🤣 can you get more passive-aggressive?
I would say to you that it is important what Chuck Schuldiner thought if we're having a discussion about either of these two albums being the first death metal album, because Chuck WAS influenced by Possessed 'Seven Churches' when he made SBG and that is well documented.
"Ultimately, this leads to Morbid Saint, not Morbid Angel"- that's a neat line from you but it led to Mantas/Death first!
Yes Black metal and blackened thrash bands have been influenced by Possessed 'Seven Churches' as well- that's how influential and important Churches is.
I can take this 'death metal with thrashy elements' narrative even further.
I think Morbid Angel 'Altars of Madness' has thrashy elements.
I think Cannibal Corpse "Eaten Back to Life" has thrashy elements.
Are we going to say death metal really started in the 1990s then?
@@jimmycampbell78 Patronizing? Passive-aggressive? That's not what I was going for at all, and even reading my comment again I'm not sure what gave you this impression, honestly. I know my writing style gives some people that vibe, though; it's a misunderstanding I've had time and time again on forums over the years. It depends on what tone of voice (if any) you project on what I wrote as you read it, what assumptions you have about me (if any) and your own preferred style of communication, I guess. If this helps change your perspective a bit: English is not my native language, and even in my native language I couldn't make short and concise points if my life depended on it; that's just how I'm wired. Sorry this gave you that impression, and I hope that's not how Greg read it. I was being honest and serious.
I don't agree with any of your points, unfortunately. We know that Mantas/Death and Possessed knew and influenced each other throughout their demo years (along with dozens of other bands through the underground tape-trading circuit); it doesn't make their opinions about each other's releases more relevant. Facts or at least specific anecdotes from them would still be important, like if Chuck said he lifted a certain riff or idea from Possessed, stuff like that (still not to be taken at face value, but relevant to at least check, sure). But just flat and broad opinions such as "they were the first" or "yeah we were death metal" are still just noise. There are countless cases where it's obvious band X picked up things from band Y just by listening to the songs and taking the dates and context into account, whether or not the band members said anything about it (and even sometimes when they swear it's not true). We don't need to read any interview by any party involved to figure out that Mustaine composed a lot more of 'Kill 'em All' than the official credits tell us, for instance; we just need access to the demos and the album.
"Yes Black metal and blackened thrash bands have been influenced by Possessed 'Seven Churches' as well- that's how influential and important Churches is."
That's just about the opposite of what I said. Possessed were themselves greatly influenced by all these bands, it wasn't a one-way street at all. And they were far from the most influential or innovative from this group of underground bands trying to one-up one another and constantly taking cues from each other in the mid 80s. That's how influential and important the whole "let's push to the extreme" trend was, and 'Seven Churches' was HARDLY a milestone for that at the end of 1985, after the first two Bathory, the debuts and EPs from both Kreator and Destruction, Sodom's debut EP, Slayer's 'Hell Awaits' and many more releases that were on par or more extreme than what Possessed brought to the table in most regards.
As I said to Greg in my previous comment, it's not the fact that there are thrash elements that's the problem, it's the lack of death elements. There are definitely a lot more of them on 'Scream Bloody Gore' than on 'Seven Churches', and if pressed I could actually consider that album the starting point of death metal honestly, even if 'Leprosy' went much farther in that direction. The influence Possessed in general had on Death is clear, but so is the influence from other releases, especially considering everything that came up in 1986 in between these two albums. I mean 'Reign in Blood', 'Darkness Descends', 'Obsessed by Cruelty', the first two Sepultura records, 'Pleasure to fucking Kill'... It's crazy how fast things were moving back then. And most of these bands were definitely aware of and influenced by one another, including both Possessed and Death, that's very clear.
Just listen to Onslaught's own "Death Metal'" song released 10 months prior to Possessed's and tell me the chorus aren't shockingly similar. 'Power From Hell' was very much relevant to this whole collective evolution, by the way. Just listening to "Angels of Death" right now, and man, besides coming up with titles that would become famous through other bands using them later, their blend of filthy speed/thrash and hardcore punk was right on the money for early '85. While we're at it, to clarify just in case, the term "death metal" was already floating around long before Possessed used it (not unlike "black metal", "power metal" and other terms that bands used kind of randomly long before they became attached to an actual genre of metal). The legendary 1984 'Death Metal' multi-band split album with HellHammer on it (but also Helloween and Running Wild lol) certainly popularized the term, along with a cover artwork that was funnily enough pretty close to what would soon become the norm after the first few big death metal bands really got going. Possessed were firmly on the "black metal" train in that regard, just like they were lyrically and in terms of production values and atmosphere.
'Seven Churches' simply didn't introduce all that much death metal elements that weren't already "meta" for all these bands and their audience by the time it came out, and listening to it now it really sounds like the filthy and sloppy speed/thrash album going for an evil "black metal" vibe the way they knew how at the time, rather than an album that moves away from that and into the death metal direction that we can hear a lot of on Death's debut (and to be fair, quite a bit more on Possessed's own second album released in between than on 'Churches'). There's almost none of these elements on 'Seven Churches': controlled chaos in the song structures, blasting drums, sudden and extreme tempo changes, fast but precise riffing with frequent changes in technique and rhythm, frequent dissonance and/or a chromatic approach, pinched harmonics dive bombs out of the blue, breakdowns, cookie monster growls...
The latter was also largely missing from Death's repertoire, as I already brought up, and to be fair the vocal style and sound is easily the one thing that's the most strikingly similar between the two bands' early releases. I'm listening to Possessed's 'Beyond the Gates' right now and it's uncanny how much the vocals are similar to Chuck's on Death's debut. Someone who never heard either albums could easily believe it's the same vocalist. But that vocal style was much closer to hardcore punk and some thrash bands without a capable singer than it was to what would soon become the typical death metal growl. Chuck's demented performance on 'Leprosy' is as close to DM growls as either band would ever get, before he evolved into his signature helium shrieks with a ton of natural distortion for the rest of his career. In contrast, Jeff very much kept the same style for the rest of Possessed's career, the far less interesting or genre-specific "I'm pissed off but I ain't got no pipes to express it convincingly'" vocal style of lesser thrash bands that they both started out as.
It depends on how you want to critique this. Does Seven Churches have Death metal elements. Yes. Is it more of a bridge between dark thrash towards Death metal. Yes. Is scream bloody gore the first full on Death metal record. Yup. This is always where the argument lies. The first record with Death metal elements or the first record that is full on Death metal.
Good points
Possessed and Death were too accessible to average Metal fans to be actually considered Death Metal. Cannibal Corpse - Butchered At Birth was the first album that was actually Death Metal, as in any track off the album would stick out like a sore thumb on a Metal compilation tape. The Vocals are much more guttural, the song titles are 100% Grotesque Graphic Gore. Butchered At Birth was the first actual complete Death Metal album. Death, Napalm Death, Possessed, Morbid Angel, and Carcass were to Butchered At Birth what Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Nazareth, Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Budgie were to Judas Priest - Sad Wings of Destiny. Just like Judas Priest, Cannibal Corpse 's debut album was not subgenre defining. Rocka Rolla was Psych Rock, and Eaten Back to Life was Thrash Metal like Altars of Madness, Leprosy Scream Bloody Gore, Spiritual Healing, Symphonies of Sickness etc. Butchered At Birth sounds like nothing prior, but almost every subsequent 'Death Metal ' released after had the similar Exaggerated Cookie Monster growl in a Devil Voice style. Even popular acts like Deicide and Morbid Angel changed Vocal styles after Butchered At Birth. If you listen to nearly anything released post Butchered At Birth went to a more guttural Vocal style, and upped the ante on Gore , Satanism, or whatever lyrical topics the bands chose as their gimmick. Butchered At Birth definitely pushed the envelope, and became a challenge for bands to attempt to surpass.
Becerra is pronounced BE-SE-RRA. Not Bekera. 🤘
Playing here in Boston October 6 with Kreator 🤘