Death by Metal

There's no point judging music artifacts on the merit of audile quality, not when the artifact in question represents the birth of one of the greatest metal bands in history, DEATH. Instead, we should embrace the buzzbombing, ratchety and frankly horrid cassette-era transfer of basement tapes comprising MANTAS' "Death by Metal" as a peek into the origins of future genius…

Formed in 1983 as Mantas with Chuck Schuldiner on vocals and guitar, Rick Rozz on guitar and Barney 'Kam' Lee on drums and vocals. In 1984 the band recorded their first demo called "Death By Metal". Soon after the recording the band split up and Chuck formed a new band named Death…

Since practically inventing the sound of grindcore on Scum, Napalm Death underwent a major lineup shuffling, which is well chronicled for convenient comparison on the Death by Manipulation compilation. Six songs come from the group's 1989 Mentally Murdered EP and feature vocalist Lee Dorrian and guitarist Bill Steer, who would leave Napalm Death to lead Cathedral and Carcass, respectively…

Of all the few truly innovative bands in the realm of extreme metal, few are as exciting to follow from a chronological standpoint as Napalm Death. Beginning with their roots in the mid-'80s as a mutated hardcore punk band with a tendency to detune their guitars, growl their vocals, and play at apocalyptic levels of intensity, the band soon went through many phases that have been nearly as influential: by the late '80s they were the world's definitive grindcore band; at the dawn of the '90s they integrated the complexities of death metal into their grindcore; then in the early '90s they began experimenting with different mutations of post-grindcore metal; and finally in the late '90s they began playing a unique style of metal that blended together the best elements of grindcore, death metal, and mainstream metal…

Zero Tolerance – both Karmageddon Media's single-disc version and the two-CD version from Candlelight released in the United States in February 2005 – has received its share of scathing reviews on metal websites. Those ultra-negative reviews of this collection of rarities by Death and Control Denied (the band that Chuck Schuldiner led during the last few years of his life) had many of the same complaints – the sound quality is inferior, Schuldiner's talents aren't adequately represented, and he never meant for these recordings to be released commercially…