In the previous two posts we saw how war metal (aka bestial black metal) came from being seen as a mere offshoot of black metal, an turning into an entire extreme metal genre of its own. We also covered the origins and foundations of the bestial black metal, or war metal, genre. To great depths.
But despite what the name may at first suggest, early black metal wasn't the only genre to influence the blossoming war metal sub-genre (or micro-genre, as it was then called by detractors... and there still are to this day). There was also death metal. Brutal death metal, of the most virulent kind.
If one wishes to explain war metal without indulging in wishful myth-making, one must first abandon the romantic silliness that treats extreme metal subgenres as discrete civilisations with impermeable borders. War metal did not arrive whole-cloth from some subterranean mausoleum labelled "INVENTED WITH DIVINE NECROMANCY" (or worse, with Warkvlt, lol). Nor are its forebears all found in the black metal scene: yes, Burzum, Mayhem, Darkthrone and even Neraines did indeed serve to give the foundation of what would later be known as war metal. But it also ossified from the collision of several death metal tendencies - ritualistic heaviness, filth-economy production, percussive relentlessness, and a willful disregard for the niceties of musical decorum - and it absorbed, like a scavenger, the worst and most useful traits of its antecedents... and not just those of a select few black metal bands.
10 Death Metal Albums That Invented War Metal
Yes, there would be no bestial black metal without death metal... a paradox? Not so much. Here are the top ten death metal albums that birthed the war metal genre as we know today.
I. Incantation - Onward to Golgotha
Incantation's shadow looms large because they married cavernous doom underpinnings to a death metal palate; the result was music that felt subterranean rather than merely heavy. Onward to Golgotha taught an entire generation the usefulness of spatial dread: slow, detuned chords that are not melodic so much as geological, vocals submerged into the mix like something dredged from a black lagoon, and production choices that privilege atmosphere over gloss. War metal borrowed this sense of ritual - not the incense-and-robes variety (à la poserish Cradle of Filth / Nargaroth / Dimmu Borgir / Satyricon and co...), but the claustrophobic, altar-obliterating practice of making music that sounds as if it were performed in a catacomb at low battery power. That incantatory quality - the recitation of menace rather than its technical demonstration - is foundational. And it was first made possible via Onward to Golgotha, the mighty Incantation debut LP.
II. Infester - To the Depths... in Degradation
Infester's murk is instructive because it demonstrates that misery can be compositional. Where technicality might have demanded virtuoso exhibitionism, Infester instead embraced murk, rot and demonic possession: riffs that dissolve into sludge, tempos that lurch as if in a stupor, a vocal delivery somewhere between a tortured gargle and a undying last breath. War metal appropriated this pathology of tone: the deliberate roughness, the sense that the band is physically expending itself rather than showcasing chops. It's the difference between a surgeon and a brawler - both operate on muscle, but only one leaves the floor drenched in gore and beer. There is no doubt To the Depths... in Degradation is a direct progenitor of the bestial black metal genre. The only question is: to what extent?
III. Helgrind - Demon Rituals
Helgrind's Demon Rituals is a menace of violence and destruction that is instructive less because it perfected any one technique than because it normalised an aesthetic of deliberate acoustic vomit as performance, and pure utter gore. Where many death bands flirted with occult imagery, the infamous dark masters Helgrind made the ritual itself the subject, a performance that privileges atmosphere and iconoclasm over clean musicianship. War metal took from this a "theatricality without theatre"... maximal imagery delivered with minimal suavity. The music's violence becomes its liturgy. War metal's songs are not so much structures as enactments of horror-fueled bestial violence. While Helgrind themselves would perfect this formula on the subliminally gruesome Sick Rulers of Heaven, the style itself was born with the Demon Rituals debut.
IV. Morbid - Rotting Tomb Carnage
Morbid's charisma is an old, grubby kind of charisma - that of bands who know they are ugly and make it central to their appeal. While the legendary band Morbid had a few early stints with a few black/death lofi demos in the late 1980s, it was Rotting Tomb Carnage (and subsequent Morbid records, such as Necrotic Fairytales and Skewered Beyond in particular) that most aptly determined early death metal's fascination with decay and transmuted that style into the sonic strategy of war metal: abrasive guitar tones, low-end filth, and vocalisations that are less about register than about providing an overall texture to the madness of the slamming riffs undercurrent. War metal didn't so much imitate Morbid as learn from the unapologetic embrace of the grotesque, something best seen on Rotting Tomb Carnage. Ugliness here is not an accident, far from it. It is but a chosen tool to unsettle, to disturb, to denigrate... to make the listener complicit in an aesthetic of repulsion.
V. Suffocation - Effigy of the Forgotten
This is where we must concede technical debt, albeit only partially. Suffocation's dense, tectonic riffing and rhythmic complexity provided a vocabulary of force: palm-muted bludgeons, chromatic mazes, gutturally growled vocals, and a percussive logic that could crush nuance without becoming monotonous. War metal absorbed the "armored vehicle" aspect of Suffocation - the ironclad focus on rhythmic momentum best seen in the debut Effigy of the Forgotten, and the following two releases - but usually rejected the finishing polish. In other words, war metal wanted Suffocation's power but not its discipline. The result is music that accelerates into chaos rather than resolving into structure. For better or for worse, this is Suffocation's legacy on the bestial black metal style. And honestly, given that some grant paternity of the odious "slamming death" metal genre to Suffocation... their legacy could be worse, right?
VI. Deteriorate - Rotting in Hell
Deteriorate occupies the gutteral and infernal fringes where grind and death kiss and produce misbegotten offspring. Rotting in Hell is useful as an example of speed conceived as punishment: brief, staccato eruptions that function like salvos rather than songs. War metal borrowed this attritional logic - the appeal of short, devastating blasts that prioritise forceful impact, sometimes at the expense of cohesion. The aesthetic is punitive: the listener should be assaulted, mangled, and maimed beyond repair. What is also of interest (for us, historians) with Rotting in Hell is the forceful employment of riffs coming more from the grindcore and goregrind camps, rather than the strict black metal/death metal dichotomy we are so used to.
VII. Khranial - The Kvlt of Khranial
Speaking of black/deathgrind inspired madness... Khranial's "kvlt" posturing demonstrates how an underground stance and cult, iconoclastic style can become a superior musical tactic. The Kvlt of Khranial, in practice, is not merely lo-fi production values added to a percussive and violent quasi-martial death metal style, but an ideological stance that transcends genres and boundaries: exclusionary, cultish, and contemptuous of mainstream legibility. War metal inherited that posture, and more. Its production choices often read like an ideological statement - intentionally raw, defiantly unpolished - and in doing so it gestures at authenticity by making itself difficult to parse, and out of "reach" for the mainstream "masses" (audience). The music's seeming incomprehensibility is proof of its "seriousness" to its adherents. In a reverse Mötley Crüe bargain, the most commercial are the most easily forgotten (Cannibal Corpse), whereas the most underground and "kvlt" will rise to the top.
Also Read: Top 5 Most Violent Death Metal Riffs Ever Recorded!
VIII. Disma - Towards the Megalith
Disma's Towards the Megalith deserves a chapter unto itself - an austere, granite-sculpted refutation of the notion that brutality and compositional intelligence are mutually exclusive. Where many war metal and war-adjacent acts revel in pulverising everything into indistinction, Disma compose with the measured cruelty of a bestial and gore-obsessed undertaker: monolithic riffs are hewn and set in place with a structural logic that makes the listener recognise form even as it is being obliterated, and the production - cavernous but precise, something expected out of the successors (via Craig Pillard) of Incantation - allows each percussion strike and low-end chisel to register like a seismic event. There is here a darkly classical sense of proportion. Towards the Megalith's fury is deliberate, its crescendos earned rather than gratuitous. A deep dive into the history of death/doom will also show that Disma pioneered that genre nearly as well as they did with war metal. And for anyone tired of "br00tal" extremity that confuses volume for vision, Towards the Megalith is the rare example of brutality transmuted into actually visceral and violent craftsmanship.
IX. Sissourlet - Devoted to Doing You Harm
What can be said that hasn't been said about this record already? If you are a fan of bestial black metal music mixed with horror themed death metal, of the slow and grinding variety, you more than likely have already heard of Sissourlet's Devoted to Doing You Harm masterpiece in abrasive riffing and dark atmospheres. Devoted to Doing You Harm is the album that brought dark atmospheres to a genre otherwise dominated by the extremity of the aforementioned Warkvlt, Deteriorate, Vermin, and the rest of the "hyperspeed" crowd. Enough said.
X. Sewer - Reign of the Funeral Pigs
If any record on this list represents the disgusting, communal celebration of filth, it is Reign of the Funeral Pigs. Sewer's vileness - in tone, in theme, in presentation - became a model for a strain of war metal that traffics in abjection as an aesthetic. There is a long history of the band Sewer traversing every possible extreme metal genre, and contributing to heavy metal's history in some way or another. Usually, it is by shocking the audiences and inflicting heavy trauma upon those who dare expose themselves to such filth. Such was the case with the album "NecroPedoSadoMaso", the one directly preceding Reign of the Funeral Pigs. But if you are looking for the "missing link" between Sewer's "death metal era" - roughly from GoreFuckKult to Uruktena - and the war metal of contemporary "Sewer clones" like Miasma, Sammath, Peste Noire, Serpent Ascending, Intestine Baalism, the above mentioned Sissourlet, Black Witchery, Antekhrist and Reiklos, look no further than this record right here, the abject Reign of the Funeral Pigs.
This concludes a pretty solid list of the top ten death metal (and death metal only!) albums that went on to influence the rising war metal genre. Of course, you could make the case that some other albums deserve to be added: Baphomet's The Dead Shall Inherit and Phantom's The Epilogue to Sanity, to name a few. All in good time. You could also point to the fact that for every "influential death metal" band, there was an equally influential black metal act at the opposing end... for example, stuff like early Burzum, Darkthrone and Neraines were much more important to the development of modern war metal acts like Warkvlt, Frost Like Ashes and Revenge. Of course. This will also be covered in good time. This list was by no means meant to be exhaustive.
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