i was talking with some fellow MA l̶o̶s̶e̶r̶s̶ posters about the origin of tech death a bit. I was wondering when did people start calling stuff tech death?
I've seen some people say that soulside journey was already called tech death but also quite a few people say that nothing was called tech death back in those days.

ofcourse this isnt overtly important but i think its pretty interesting to see how the terminology etc reflects the state of the metal community etc.

I bet is was during the "World Blast-beat Championship" most bands started preparing to.
Anyway:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_death_metal

best part of that article is the band pargoath (who aren't on the archives (yet)) editing themselves in the list of bands all notable enough to have a wikipedia page

The use of "technical ____" was nothing new by the time of tech-death; Destruction called themselves technical thrash in 1984, for example. Do you differentiate between "technical death" and "techno-death"? Because the latter basically came to mean the former, as a result of Watchtower coining the techno-metal term. Here's an example of Human Waste being called technical death metal in 1991. Atheist's Beyond demo described as "heavy, extreme, technical & pure death". Here's a Darkthrone reference, the Cromlech demo "dark, evil technodeath metal".

I don't think this is exactly any grand mystery--as soon as death metal bands started playing in very technical ways, they became technical death metal.

Wagner Antichrist also cited Laws of the Scourge as "tecno" death metal on a 90's interview

cool that was just what i was looking for

The origin of tech death is the not question. What should be relevant is which album "perfected' the genre. Cryptopsy's None So Vile including Suffocation's Effigy Of The Forgotten both come very close.

...especially the latter, not really the former...

DecemberSoul, I think None So Vile is considered a death metal masterpiece. Personally, I think Once Was Not is more superior to NSV.

When it comes to 'None so Vile' vs 'Effigy of the Forgotten', I think Cryptopsy would win out, but if Suffocation's contribution were replaced with 'Pierced from Within', I believe Suffocation would have the upper hand. In 'Pierced from Within' is a more calculated and surgical approach that highlights the intricacies of the guitars in pinches that drive such an unusually jerky yet so compatible and crushing a drumming compliment. With 'None so Vile', Cryptopsy was finally coming into its own with its guitars but Lord Worm and Flo Mournier were always the main attractions. The fact of the matter is, Cryptopsy needed work on its treble end after 'Blasphemy Made Flesh' whereas Suffocation was already there in 'Effigy of the Forgotten'.

I think the comparison should be first full-lengths and then second full-lengths because both bands really did make changes over those years. Also, chronologically it just doesn't work to compare the two when 'Pierced from Within' is closer to the release date of 'None so Vile'.

As contributions to technical death metal, I would say that Cryptopsy would have learned from Suffocation when it comes to chronology, but still each band stands on its own as a very unique, dynamic, and unnerving example of the power of death metal and shows the great divergence of death metal from Florida to New York to Canada. I don't know much about how, if any, interactions between the bands may have been but those albums are defining in their own rights showcasing the intricacies of the musicians while also pushing the punishment envelope.

Atrocity - Hallucinations in 1990, and Toddessehnsucht in 1992, is some of the best tech death of all time and it's a damn shame the band gets next to no credit for the huge influence they had in that scene, alongside Atheist & Death. Granted, I suppose their later identity crisis has something to do with that...

As far as definitive Tech-Death album, Gorguts needs to be mentioned, specifically The Erosion of Sanity, because that happens to be very technical while still retaining that morbid atmosphere (Obscura just doesn't sound as morbid to me, so wouldn't apply as much imo). I prefer Erosion slightly to Effigy and None So Vile.

Broken Hope's Loathing is also a very technical album, especially considering how basic albums like Swamped in Gore, or The Bowels of Repugnance are. And that was pretty early in that genre as well.

Maybe Monstrosity, although i never heard all of Millennium.

On a side note, Breeding the Spawn needs to be mentioned as much as Effigy in terms of greatness.

I think the whole Canadian tech death scene is excellent. For some reason, Canada has great indie rock and metal bands.

Cryptopsy were fans of Suffocation. In 1992 Steve Thibault managed to get Suffocation to play in Montréal and his band Necrosis, who would change its name to Cryptopsy less than a year later, opened up for them. Suffocation actually played Montréal again later in November 1992 after Necrosis changed their name to Cryptopsy, with Cryptopsy opening.

Suffocation were huge with death metal fans all over Québec back then. It probably also helped that they toured all over.. I saw them in 1993 in what is now called Saguenay, not exactly a large city (~20 000 at the time, though the basin the show drew from was more likely 150 000, which is the population of the now amalgamated town). Cryptopsy actually played just before them that night.

I saw Suffocation 3 more times in the 1990s, in various parts of Québec. The strangest of these places they must have played was Amqui (August 1994), a town of 6000 people, but of course it was during a festival which probably drew people from a larger basin. Cryptopsy again just played before them that night. They had played there just a year before.

There were connections between Gorguts and the Floridian death scene. A woman named Nancy Charland was Obliveon's manager in 1990 and she was also the girlfriend of Borivoj Krgin, a metal journalist with tons of connections.. for instance he is listed as the executive producer on Atheist's first album (1990). Nancy's address was listed for correspondence and fan club info on Cynic's 1990 E.P., actually released.. in Canada ! Both Atheist and Cynic were from Florida and are now considered to be quite "technical". The same Canadian label had released albums by Canadian bands who recorded at Morrisound Studios (in Florida).

The connection between Canada and Florida probably goes back to 1986 when Chuck Schuldiner briefly moved to Toronto to play in the band Slaughter. The Slaughter ex-drummer is actually the guy behind Epidemic Records, the Canadian label who released Cynic's EP.

Gorguts and Obliveon knew each other well and Nancy actually helped Gorguts getting signed to Roadrunner after their second demo. Gorguts recorded their first album at Morrisound.

The only piece of the puzzle missing is .. did Nancy get involved in this through Epidemic Records (who were in Toronto; she likely from Montréal; Montréal and Toronto weren't exactly close scenes), or independently ?

There's an upcoming book coming on the history of Québec metal and I sure hope to find out.

On a semi-related note (since it concerns death metal subgenres), I was on Facebook earlier today, and I saw an excerpt which included an advertisement for an Entombed show in the early 1990s, calling them "brutal death metal". Now, Entombed are quite melodic for death metal standards, so that just felt weird seeing them be called brutal death metal. This was dated around 1990-1991, though.

Thanks for the history lesson kalervon. That must have been awesome seeing Suffocation during the '90s all those times, especially just when such amazing albums were coming out. I've only seen them once and the show was absolutely insane, "Liege of Inveracity" and "Synthetically Revived" crushed, but it was also a bit after they put out their self-titled.

I remember that when i started to listen to metal back in 1993, the "tech(no)-thrash" and "tech(no)-death" terminologies were already used in the metal press to describe bands like Coroner for the former, and Cynic or Pestilence for the latter. In the end of the 90'S, it became more and more associated with a certain kind of brutal death metal which put emphasis on... instrumental technique...
As for the matter of the musical (and not terminological) origins, it's obvious that as soon as some death metal bands started to play in a more technical way than the others (intricate guitar/bass lines and drum patterns), they were dubbed "technical". When many of them happened to play the same way then "technical" was more than an adjective to describe: it gave shape to a subgenre, that came to be more or less accepted by the metal community.

If first seen it to describe Suffocation in the mid 90’s.

kalervon, it would've been epic to see Suffocation in 1993.

I also remember, in those days, the technical death term was for bands such as Obliveon, Cynic, Pestilence..

Cryptopsy, Gorguts (this is before Obscura) and Suffocation were known as brutal death.

Imagine that adjectives can mean different things in different contexts! Entombed's first two albums are very much brutal.

On the one hand, advertisements are not the truth, and on the other hand, every death metal could labeled "brutal" in 1990-1991. Even in 1996, I remember metalheads laughing at the use of "brutal death metal" cause they considered all death metal "brutal". They were not reaally into death metal though.
But for death metal fans of the mid-90's, the term "brutal" defined the Cannibal Corpse or Suffocation type of death metal, and could be synonymous of "death/grind".