Christian death metal
Musically, it remains indistinguishable from traditional death metal, characterized by heavy guitar riffs, blast beats, and guttural vocals.
Christian death metal proper formed in the late-1980s to the mid-1990s through the outputs of Mortification, Vomitorial Corpulence, and Paramaecium in Australia, Opprobrium, Living Sacrifice, and Crimson Thorn in the United States, Sympathy in Canada, and the early work of Antestor in Norway.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Norway's Extol, Finland's Immortal Souls and Deuteronomium, Sweden's Pantokrator, Germany's Sacrificium, Ukraine's Holy Blood, the United States' Embodyment, Feast Eternal, Possession, Aletheian, Becoming the Archetype, and Tortured Conscience, and Brazil's Antidemon emerged to further develop the genre.
A minority take an aggressive attitude towards those who speak against Christianity, preaching "fire and brimstone" and "Old Testament Wrath of God" back at extreme Satanists.
[21][22] Kris Klingensmith of Barnabas explained that "since Christian musicians have always copied the trends and styles initiated by their secular counterparts, 'Christian metal' was unavoidable.
[31] In a 2016 retrospective, Classic Rock wrote that "For almost every sub-genre of heavy music there's an inferior Christian version playing the church circuit... ...That's Stryper's fault, basically.
"[53] Conversely, Christian rock apologist Eric Sellin argues that "the fact that the lyrics are to the casual or first time listener rather indecipherable, that's just the nature of the scene.
"[54] Likewise, Rick Peart of Voices from the Darkside in their review of From the Dead (2018) by the Christian death metal band Corpse concedes that "when we listen to an album, a significant part of what really matters is the value of music, regardless of the lyrical themes or the concept.
Author Christopher Partridge holds that because the agenda is set by the music, not theology, it is difficult for Christian extreme musicians to move far beyond topics of violence, death, and apocalypse.
[42] Steve Rowe on Mortification's self-titled album (1991) delivered fire and brimstone sermons railing against sin "like a feverish Old Testament prophet" on songs like "The Destroyer Beholds" and "Satan's Doom".
[67] Some bands, such as Tortured Conscience, Sordid Death, Crimson Thorn, Grim, and Lament, will lyrically engage in a form of self-flagellation.
For instance, the Mortification song "Toxic Shock" decries drug abuse, "Grind Planetarium" mocks a rock star's desire to be worshipped,[61][67] and Tortured Conscience's "Moloch Reborn" rejects abortion.
[46] "An Open Letter" by Tortured Conscience rebuts Jehovah's Witnesses,[64] and Opprobrium denounce corrupt political and religious leaders on "Blaspheming Prophets".
He quotes as an example a forum comment reacting to the cover art of Antestor's The Return of the Black Death (1998): "I personally don't have peace about it though.
[86] According to Doug Van Pelt of HM, "Nothing has really come out before or since this album hit the scene", and the songs "White Throne" and "Human Sacrifice" are high water marks of Christian metal.
[91] Subsequent the work of Opprobrium, the groups Mortification and Vomitorial Corpulence, both from Melbourne, Australia, were the main progenitors of the Christian death metal.
[95] Barry Alfonso in The Billboard Guide to Contemporary Christian Music describes the recording as plunging the listener into a "nightmarish landscape of tortured humanity".
"[86][101] Roughly contemporary with Mortification and Vomitorial Corpulence, the bands Living Sacrifice and Crimson Thorn, from the United States, and Sympathy, from Canada emerged.
[102][36][103] Heavily influenced by the Florida death metal scene,[37] the band released three recordings in this vein — Living Sacrifice (1991), Nonexistent (1992), and Inhabit (1994).
[105] Crimson Thorn, formed in Minneapolis, is described by Eduardo Rivadavia of AllMusic as "surely one of the world's most extreme-sounding Christian metal bands.
[112][116] In an HM review of the album Martyrium (recorded in 1994 but not released until 2000), Jamie Lee Rake asked "might Antestor have been a band of believers who were actually (sit down for this one) innovating in their scene?
[118][119] In 1998, Manu Lehtinen and Miika Partala from the band founded Little Rose Productions, a combined Christian metal record label and music importer and exporter – the first of its kind in Finland.
[71] The short-lived band Tinnitus, from Jakobstad, in the late 1990s became an outlet for Christian teenagers from conservative free churches which were antagonistic to heavy metal.
Jillian Drachman for Metal Injection writes that "By finding their own sound, Schaliach was able to reconcile form and content to an extent that remains admirable though still imperfect.
"[125] According to Jesus Freak Hideout's Timothy Estabrooks, the band's 2000 release Undeceived was the "high water mark" of Christian death metal, "practically defining" the genre just as Mortification had years earlier.
[131][132] Embodyment, formed in 1992 in the United States, started as a death metal band and then became a pioneer of the deathcore genre with their 1998 debut, Embrace the Eternal.
[146][147] Apart from the abundance of festivals in North America, the scholar Matthew Peter Unger in 2016 found that very little scholarship exists of the contemporary Christian extreme metal scenes in the United States and Canada.
[72] The band's 2014 release Incarnate was called by HM's Collin Simula a rare example of Christian death metal that does not sound sub-par or forced.
[175] Throughout their discography, As I Lay Dying included varying amounts of melodic death metal, borrowing from both the Swedish and American sonic templates for the genre.
[191] Since the 1990s and the founding of Bone Saw, Prithviraj has worked heavily as a promoter of and event manager for the heavy metal music scene in South India, which saw an explosion of popularity in the 2000s.
