I am really drawing a blank here. Like, what is the difference between death metal and brutal death metal? I mean, i hear people say "That's brutal!" to death metal, but that doesn't make it brutal death metal.

I would have to say that it is death metal with rapid tempo changes, possibly breakdowns, distorted guitar and bass, and deep, guttural vocals. I don't even know if this is right and I like brutal death metal...

Any help?

All death metal is brutal by definition, but when someone mentions the subgenre brutal death metal, they're referring to the Suffocation-style bands.

It's usually a reference to shit bands.

Usually it means VERY percussive.Lots of serious palm muting, not just some open note drone, but like power chords as well.Usually like 3 billion tempo changes too Vocals are more guttural as well usually.Basically, Suffocation.

Agreed, percussive is probably the most important term in defining it.

I'd imagine it has non-stop blastbeats.

Not always, mostly yes but a lot of non brutal shit is non stop blasting.

Yeah like Hour of Penance and Origin... Good God I cannot stand stuff like that. Its hard to tell the tracks apart since its JUST blast beats.

[quote="Adriankat"]All death metal is brutal by definition

except... that.. entire genre called... melodic death metal... its like power metal with growls

No, it's not. I mean, yeah there's bands like CoB and Kalmah, but are you telling me Hypocrisy, Godgory or Carcass' Heartwork is power metal? Melodeath is pretty varied (while admittedly being swamped in Gothenburg style melodeath).

of course i was exaggerating. there are exceptions to everything. if anything those bands you mentioned are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Melodeath has become trendy, most bands sound extremely cheesy / silly to me, and really do sound like power metal with growls for me.

never was a fan of Carcass TBH but hypocrisy is great.

I only wish the sound Dissection pretty much started and perfected had not been bastardized by so many bands

That's a stereotype because of bands like In Flames and COB. A lot of melodic death metal doesn't sound like power metal.And most melodic black metal doesn't.

But they aren't exceptions. There's just a bunch of clones so people think it's the norm. There's still bands like Desultory, Be'lakor and Amon Amarth.

Check out Cipher System for some great Dissection-esque melodeath, if you haven't already.

There are a ton of great melodeath bands beneath the surface!

Really deep breebree stuff with lyrics about shit eating and fast guitar.

When I think of "Brutal Death Metal", I think of faster, chunky DM with lots of palm muting, blasts, gurgles/growls, and a good amount of technical prowess. Huge sonic walls of insanity. A sound more akin to grindcore than standard sludgy, groovy DM such as Autopsy and Impetigo.

So, yeah, it's very percussive and fast.

I really wouldn't call desultory melodeath, theyre just pretty straightforward swedish death

I think the point of Brutal Death Metal is just to be faster with more blast beats than normal Death Metal. I dunno, I actually think it's a useless categorization. When I track my collection, I label both brutal death metal and normal death metal as just "Death Metal." However, I do label Melodic Death Metal as that, and I label the more progressive / spacey DM bands as Technical Death Metal bands like Augury, Atheist, Cynic and the like.

If that's your definition of brutal death, it's no wonder you consider it to be a useless categorisation.

An easy analogy - death metal:brutal death :: doom/death:funeral doom

Essentially it just takes the most obvious and clear elements of the genre and overdrives them dramatically.

Most brutal death metal songs are shorter than the usual death metal!! and also the lyrical themes are quite approching to the grind themes and style.

i thought brutal death metal also tended to have higher pitched vocals sometimes(pig squeals)

What about bands like Nile or Hate Eternal or Origin? They are considered brutal death (at least here on MA, and I think of them that way too), though they don't have a lot of stuff in common with what many people call brutal death nowadays (ie slam).

What IS slam? I keep hearing about it, but I have no idea what seperates it from regular death metal.

slam is more based off hardcore where as they are more about the breakdown instead of the technicality of brutal death metal.

Listen to the first album by Devourment. That is slam. Slams are a kind of heavy and groovy riffing.
Like people have said, brutal death metal is a more percussive and thick kind of death metal, often a lot faster too. It doesn't have to be more "brutal" than regular death metal, a lot of brutal death bands are about as brutal as a power metal band, and everyone defines "brutality" in music differently. Hour Of Penance is what I think as the textbook definition of brutal death metal. It's faster, more technical, heavier and more intensive than your average Florida death.

I dont consider brutal death more intense most of the time. Infact i know just 1 brutal death band that id call actually more intense than standard death and that would be Fornjotr.

It's kind of an older sibling to deathcore. Bands like Dying Fetus and Skinless are good examples of slam bands. It's a more mosh-friendly simplistic form of death metal.

*EDIT
Simplistic is a bad word, straight-ahead is better. In other words, you won't really hear too much experimentation in slam.

You hit it pretty head on until I read Hour of Penance. I hate them and cannot stand them at all. Skinless is my textbook band of brutal death metal, even though they aren't as big, they have a good combination of groove, technicality and that percussive tone that bdm bands have, but that is just me.

I'd be more inclined to cite Suffocation (Effigy of the Forgotten primarily) as the blueprint for brutal death - and all its offshoots.

Either you're wrong, or I am a slam loving pansy. I hope ( and think) it's the first option.

Dying Fetus are pretty slam from what I've heard, but I've only heard some of their newer stuff. Never heard Skinless, don't plan to since I dislike slam quite a lot.

I don't know if they are slam themselves, though, I think they were pivotal in creating it. I've always considered them more hardcore influenced death metal, if you've only heard their newer stuff check out "Destroy the Opposition".

They're not quite slam, but they're good examples of what would lead to slam. The emphasis on groove and breakdowns, the more gutteral vocals, the NYHC influence and the overall sludgier, more percussive approach to DM. Everything that would define slam was there, it just wasn't as compressed or focused.

Course, even Devourment never took things to the extent that modern slam does. So you could probably make a case for lumping them in with early slam bands based on similarity, the same way that some harsher death/thrash bands get lumped in with 'pure' DM.

You are so very wrong mate. Dying Fetus has more hardcore elements in their music and Skinless is a standard brutal death metal band. So you can't really cite them as slam bands. If it wasn't for Devourment's debut, there wouldn't even be Slam, at least not as we know it now. Almost all slam bands are influenced by Devourment. Some other bands who had their role in development of this sub-genre are Eternal Suffering, Internal Bleeding and Repudilation. But most people don't know about them as they didn't get as much attention as Devourment did. And why people can't differentiate between slam and deathcore is beyond me.

People can't differenciate between brutal death and deathcore? Sure, they're both full of breakdowns, but the breakdown style is extremely different.

To say that slam is substantially influenced by hardcore is something of a misnomer in my opinion: the 'slam' breakdown is extremely different in structure and sound from a hardcore breakdown. It's more an extension and dramatization of grooving NYDM. While there were older bands that performed a similar style (Internal Bleeding, Dying Fetus, etc.) those are more of a 'proto slam' and don't feature the sort of focus that defines the genre as it stands. As Devourgasm said, everyone gives the most credit to Devourment, but that's for a reason: yeah, you could suggest that there are bands which created the slam archetype before Devourment did, but no single band did as much to codify the genre and influence others as they did.

I have never heard a single slam riff in Dying Fetus or Skinless. Jason Keysers other band Mucopus is pretty slammy though. The first slam riff was written by Suffocation, in the song Liege Of Inveracity, it starts around 2.50 and goes on for about 20 s.

Not to mention Deathcore is melodic, which slam death certainly isn't.

They're significantly different from the modern metalcore/deathcore single note staccato chugs but not all that far removed from the rolling groove-based breakdowns used in early metalcore and tough-guy Hardcore. Which isn't that surprising really. The NYHC scene had an influence on NYDM in general but a march larger influence on the proto-slam bands like DF and Internal Bleeding