Death metal and the roads less travelled | Part IV – Deathcult for Eternity: The Triumph, 1995-2001

A hundred death metal albums not from the USA The final period in this series is also the ultimate motivation for this little exercise. There are few who would deny that death metal peaked between 1991-92. The established narrative has it that the genre then wobbled throughout the rest of the 90s, with some bands undertaking ill conceived commercial ventures, and many more simply calling it a day. In Decibel’s book on Scott Burns, the chapters from 1996 onwards do have a very morning-after-the-night-before feel. Deicide returned to Morrisound to work with Burns one more time on ‘Serpents of the Light’ in 1997, and Suffocation’s ‘Despite the Sun’ EP recorded that some year would be the last death metal release Burns worked on. Burns, along with the bands he rose up with, knew their best material was probably behind them by that point. Death metal was moving into a different, more nebulous phase, highlighted by rise of Nile, one of the last silverbacks from the genre’s golden era to…