American

Band: Autopsy

Logo: Letters are dripping and oozing. Each letter is a different sort of horrific figure. Cobwebs, horns, eyes. Grosses out.

Album:

Mental Funeral - 1991

Some sort of lurching horror featured on cover. Gruesome and evil looking. Disgusting and putrefying. Instills sense of disgust in viewer, makes one feel uneasy. Swampy green contrasts with blood read. Teeth, claws, puss, eyes. Abstract and horrible.

Sound: Evil, horror film inspired, gruesome. Murky production value, as though recorded in cave or chasm. Guttural vocals, down-tuned guitars groove and thrash. Faster thrashing parts lead into slower gloomy and doom-esque sections. Lurching and crawling. Guitar solos scream, create evil and macabre atmosphere. Dual guitar creates unique rhythms and extra-heavy doom sections. Little technicality, focus on heaviness and evil atmosphere.

Lyrics:

"Can you hear the funeral bell
Ringing in your mind
What will they find
In your blackened brain
Lobotomized, tranquilized
Falling, crawling
Casket calling
Slip into the abyss..."

Inspire sense of dread and foreboding evil. All sorts of evil present; zombies, malefic doctors, evil spirits, monstrous horror, one's own death, caverns, diseases, the horror of the unknown.

Feeling: Like watching an 80s slasher horror film. Blood, guts, death. Terror, like something is coming after you. Like running through a graveyard from a horde of zombies and suddenly falling into a fresh grave.  Slow heavy parts of the songs suffocates one and creates a crushing atmosphere, dread induced.

Relation to Scene: Pure American death metal. Thrash and doom influence creates a purely American sound. Lyrical themes of the undead and other horrific occurrences have always been at the forefront of American death metal.

The Band: At this point, a bunch of old gross men. Leather jackets worn adorned with buttons in typical metal fashion. Band t-shirts and sunglasses.

Members:

Chris Reifert - Vocals, Drums

Eric Cutler - Vocals, Guitars

Danny Coralles - Guitars

Joe Allen - Bass

Australian

Band: Portal

Logo: Looks like letters were found in an ancient and mystical text. Sophisticated, macabre, esoteric. Very simple and calligraphic.

Album:

Outre' - 2007

Confusion. Induced dread. Clocklike creature with reptilian hands walking among dead bodies, bodies writhing in pain, headless bodies and bodiless heads. Cluster of column-like clocks toppling over, decrepit and jaged. Some broken or smashed. Eerie. Antique sepia. H.P. Lovecraft-ian. Old, decrepit, cobblestone path. Looming darkness in back. 

Sound: Dissonant, suffocating atmosphere. Evil down-tuned guitars, buzzing, a swirling miasma. Almost soundscape. Overpowering. Disjointed, off-time rhythms, dizzying. Sudden shift to slow lurching. Cosmic and Lovecraftian horror. Invocation of evil spirits and the Great Old Ones through the harsh raspy whispers of The Curator. Frantic drumming like that of a mad-man. The two guitars and bass grate against one another, disorienting the listener. Cascading rhythms pulse and sway ever deeper into oblivion, causing one to slip further into the abyss of the music.

Lyrics:

"Yog sothoth, the noxious liquescent blasphemy
Who knowest the mazes of time, for all time is the one unto him
The key & the gate, opener of the way
Through those unspeakable of the void re-enter

Soul symbol of the most abysmal evil"

Use nonsensical/uncommon words, create a sense of unknown, as if one has entered a realm in which they are familiar with nothing. Talk of the Great Old Ones from H.P. Lovecraft's Mythos and cosmic horror. Influence of time's subjectiveness and relativity is also found, Contemplation of vast solar systems and the horror which awaits in them.

Feeling: Sound and lyrics disorient. So otherworldly in nature it makes one feel as if they are drifting through the cosmos, encountering evil spirits and monstrosities along the way. One gets the sense that something horrible is going to happen, the evil whispering of the Curator sets one edge. Like he is calling upon evil to create something truly horrific.

Relation to Scene: Exemplary of the Australian scene's interest in magic and H.P. Lovecraft. Many other bands play in the same disjointed and disorienting style.

The Band: All members have otherworldly appearances. The Curator wears clock on head, or a gigantic tattered wizard hat, or a black martire, or a two faced veil with which he wears tentacle fingers. Other members wear executioners masks and nooses around necks. 

Members:

The Curator - Vocals

Aphotic Mote - Guitars

Horror Illogium - Guitars

Ignis Fatuus - Drums

Omenous Fugue - Bass

Canadian

Band: Blasphemy

Logo: Simple and elegant. Like that of an ancient text. Letters are jagged and dripping.

Album:

Gods of War - 1993

Majestic cover hides brooding evil inside. Symbols of the occult featured along side pagan god. Triumphant goddess of war. Glorification of war. Image of the cosmos featured to hint at cryptic mysticism found within. 

Sound: True war metal. Primitive and bludgeoning guitars crush and devastate  Blackened riffs swirl and convulse. Guitars mimic machine guns in their tone. Never slowing, always charging. No emphasis on technicality, only on pulverizing brutality. Solos cry out like fallen soldiers. Drums play strictly blastbeats, bass has very little presence except to accompany drums. Influence from black metal also heard.

Lyrics: 

"Together proclaiming war

The worlds ending forever more

A nuclear power plant scare

Breathing out the flame of doom

Cursing all evil on the land

Nuke metal sinning calling of war"

Warlike chants riddled with occultism and mysticism. Doom and devastation. Emphasis placed on the event of war. Distorted vocals rasp and grunt creating an evil hellish atmosphere. Sin. Nuclear destruction and hits of apocalypse.

Feeling: True feeling of death and devastation. Like being in a warzone. Lyrics of war mixed with fast pace create a frantic atmosphere, cause listener to feel as if they are in danger. Lyrics concerning occult magic and mysticism creates feeling of some perverse war ritual. Creates

Relation to Scene: Champions of the classic Ross Bay Cult style of death metal. A group of musicians dedicated to what they call "war metal". Created the classic war metal sound. Ross Bay Cult's influence can be found across the globe especially in Canada.

The Band: Skulls (human and animal), bullet belts, chains, gauntlets, upside down crosses, leather. Some corpse paint featured to hint at black metal influence. All members getting old at this point, still haven't given up war metal mentality.

Members:

Nocturnal Grave Desecrator and Black Winds - Bass, Vocals

3 Black Hearts of Damnation and Impurity - Drums

Caller of the Storms - Guitars

DeathLörd of Abomination & War Apocalypse - Guitars

Finnish

Band: Demilich

Logo: Seems to be made of some sort of branches. Symmetrical, jagged, peculiar. Natural looking.

Album: 

Nespithe - 1993

Dark, shrouded figure and militant looking figure stand in front of flames and above a group of disfigured and horrifically mangled figures. Hellish read background. Torment and disfigurement prominent. Dark figure holding a weapon. Overseeing the gruesome figures like horrific task-master. Disfigured creatures have bulging eyes, are tethered to something. 

Sound: Distorted and manipulated vocals grunt and gurgle. Mimicking the sounds of a horrible belching creature. Disjointed guitars wail and screech against one another. Technical. Abrasive. Dissonant. Heavy use of bass guitar. Rumbles along with drums. Creates a very brutal, low-end effect. Heavy use of snare and drum fills. Experimentation with textures/feelings.

Lyrics: 

"Walking ahead

Torture spreading on the way

Dismembered human beings

Flying souls fading away

You find no escape

Walking just around and around

Flying shadows slaying and torturing

Will they also rip your soul away...?"

Filled with images of terror, and esoteric horror. Abstraction of spectral evil. The listener is made to be the victim, getting tortured and dismembered by ghouls. Ideas of the cosmos ever present. A fascination with space and time. Cryptic hymns to a cosmic evil. Rejection and hatred of all religion. 

Feeling: Paranoia induced through extremely frantic nature. Mysterious, mystical. Belched vocals disgust. Makes one feel as though a creature is stalking them. Ominous and evil. Haunting riffs and solos fills with dread. Use of technicality disorients. Otherworldly sounding. Atonal and disjointed rhythms pierce ears.  

Relation to Scene: Paveed way for ultra-technical and brutal bands. Finnish scene was very experimental. Disjointed rhythms and odd time signatures create a purely Finnish sound. Heavy riffing still included. Abstract and mystical lyrics also large part of Finnish scene.

The Band: A group of Finnish college age kids. Band t-shirts, flannels, and long grimy hair. Look like one's average metal head.

Members: 

Antti Boman - Vocals, Guitars

Aki Hytönen - Guitars

Corpse - Bass

Mikko Virnes - Drums

Swedish

Band: Dismember

Logo: Jagged, symmetrical, simple. As a whole looks almost like fangs of evil beast. Sharp and menacing.

Album: 

Like an Ever Flowing Stream - 1991

Gate to a mystical realm. Horrific armored dragon sculptures/fountains guard this place. Fire seeps through wall adorned with fanged creature. Horrible spiked worm like creatures found above doorways. Beautiful epic landscape found in distance. Classic Dan Seagrave cover art.

Sound: Lightning fast. Sunlight Studios buzzsaw guitar tone. Influence from hardcore punk and d-beat bands. Clear production value displays bands many talents. Down-tuned guitars create pummeling atmosphere. Solos lace songs with haunting melodies. Grunted and barked vocals as frantic as music. Eerie keyboards utilized sparingly, creates haunting atmosphere.

Lyrics:

"From the skies blood drips like rain
Tell me how I suffer, tell me how I'll die
My arms stretched out in eternal pain

The life that we knew drowned in the stream of death
The agony within tears my worthless being

Crushed
By the blasphemous horror inside
Enter a world
Beyond this [fucking] global tomb"

Gore and agony. Pain can be heard in vocals. Emphasis on decimation, destruction, power. Suffering and death. Serial killers, hell, dismemberment, and mysticism. Futile attempts to escape from death. Imminence of death.

Feeling: Claustrophobic and frantic. Leaves one's head spinning. Extremely fast pace fuels rage. Ominous while pummeling. Hectic nature instills fear and paranoia. Extreme speeds makes one want to mosh and punch. Lurking evil ignored due to induced anger. Lyrics creep out.

Relation to Scene: Perfect example of what is known as "classic Swedish sound". Buzzsaw guitar and hardcore influence found within rest of scene. Members played in other classic Swedish bands (Carnage, Grave, Entombed, etc.).

The Band: Members wear leather or band t-shirts. Long hair and beards. Some members getting old at this point. In typical Swedish fashion new/younger members have been recruited over time.

Members:

Matti Kärki - Vocals

David Blomqvist - Guitars

Martin Persson  - Guitars

Tobias Cristiansson - Bass

Thomas Daun - Drums