It all started with the man above, Chuck Schuldiner. Death Metal. Some people may argue that it all started with Possessed but to me Chuck Schuldiner and his band Death are the fathers of Death Metal, without wanting to take away anything from Possessed’s legacy.
What I realized is that members of Death went on to form or join other Death Metal bands and in turn members of these bands went on to form or join other DM bands aswell and so on and so forth.
So what I want to do is this: I’ll give you a quick rundown of bands that are in some way related to the fathers of Death Metal. Make the jump for your daily dose of Death Metal.
Death was formed in 1984 and they released 26 demos before recording their debut album ‘Scream Bloody Gore’ in 1987. The band had lots of line-up changes over the years, which resulted in 24 members overall and the only constant member being Chuck Schuldiner.
Death released 7 studio albums and then disbanded due to Chuck Schuldiner dying of brain stem cancer in December of 2001.
The band left a huge mark on the rising Death Metal scene in the mid to late 80’s.
Death - Spiritual Healing
The most controversial member of Death was Terry Butler, who was the bassist for the band during the recordings of ‘Spiritual Healing’ and ‘Leprosy’. Chuck Schuldiner claimed the he was the one who recorded the bass parts on ‘Leprosy’ because Butler wasn’t able to play what Schuldiner wanted him to play.
in 1990, Schuldiner decided not to tour in support of ‘Spiritual Healing’ but Butler and drummer Bill Andrews decided to tour with Death but without Schuldiner, hiring replacements for the tour. Butler and Andrews were fired from the band shortly afterwards.
Terry Butler went on to play with Massacre and Six Feet Under a while after he was fired.
Six Feet Under were formed as a side-project in 1993 by Chris Barnes and Allen West. Terry Butler and Greg Gall joined shortly afterwards and the band released their first studio album ‘Haunted’ in 1995.
Allen West left the band after 1997’s ‘Warpath’ to re-join his original band (more on that later on) in 1998 and the band then recruited former Massacre and Terry Butler bandmate Steve Swanson.
Six Feet Under - Hacked to Pieces
With this line-up, SFU released 6 studio albums and 3 cover albums (‘Graveyard Classics’ I – III). Earlier this year, Terry Butler and Greg Gall left the band and former and current Chimaira members Kevin Talley and Rob Arnold joined the band. A new bassist has yet to be announced.
As mentioned above, the band was started as a side-project and that’s because Six Feet Under vocalist Chris Barnes used to be the vocalist of Cannibal Corpse up until 1995.
Cannibal Corpse are among the most well known Death Metal bands and spawned countless controversies involving their lyrics and artworks, which were in most cases done by Vince Locke who is also known as the main force behind the ‘Deadworld’ comics.
Formed in 1988 by former members of such bands as Beyond Death, Leviathan and Tirant Sin, Cannibal recorded 5 albums with Chris Barnes, of which only 4 albums were originally released. Corpse’s 5th album ‘Vile‘ was originally recorded with Chris Barnes on vocals and it was going to be called ‘Created to Kill’ but Barnes was fired from the band before it was released. The band then recruited former Corpsegrinder singer George Fisher who re-recorded the vocals for the album, which was then renamed to ‘Vile’. ‘Created to Kill’ was finally released 8 years later in the Box Set ’15 Year Killing Spree’.
Cannibal Corpse - When Death replaces Life
The band released 11 studio albums so far and are currently writing the as-of-yet untitled follow-up to the 2009’s ‘Evisceration Plague’.
As mentioned above, Chris Barnes’ former Six Feet Under bandmate Allen West left the band in 1998 to focus on his original band, which brings us to Obituary.
Obituary were formed in 1985 and, among others, included former members of Death and later Six Feet Under.
Allen West, original guitarist for Obituary, started Six Feet Under with Chris Barnes as a side-project in 1993. He was with Obituary from 1985 until 1989 and from 1992 until 2006.
Obituary - The End Complete
As of 2011, Obituary released 8 studio albums, which laid the foundation for a lot of Groove/Death and Death’n’Roll bands. The band is set to released their as-of-yet untitled ninth album later this year.
So we went from Death to Six Feet Under to Cannibal Corpse to Obituary but there’s one more band that I would like to introduce to you. A band that once featured former Cannibal Corpse and current Six Feet Under vocalist Chris Barnes. I’m talking about Torture Killer.
Torture Killer were formed in 2002 as a Six Feet Under cover band, ‘Torture Killer’ was the name of a song on SFU’s ‘Maximum Violence’ album. The band soon began to write their own music and released ‘For Maggots to Devour’ in 2003.
In 2005, Chris Barnes joined Torture Killer to record the highly underrated album ‘Swarm!,’ which was then released in 2006. Barnes never appeared live with Torture Killer, because TK are based in Finland and Barnes lives in Tampa, Florida. He left the band in 2008.
Torture Killer - Forever Dead
The band then recruited Juri Sallinen and recorded ‘Sewers’ with him, which was released in 2009.
So there you have it, 5 very important Death Metal bands who are, or were, related in some kind of way and it all started with Death…
