Death Metal: 33 1/3 Genre Series

Featuring exclusive interviews with key figures, from Napalm Death vocalist Barney Greenway to guitarist Bill Steer of Gentlemans Pistols, Carcass, and Napalm Death, this is your definitive guide through the history of death metal. Expect guitars playing abrasive, discordant riffs, the thunderous double-kick of the drums acting like an accelerated heartbeat, and porcine, guttural vocals pummeling twisted lyrics.

Courting controversy from its inception to its modern-day iteration, death metal presents a number of fascinating contradictions: driven and adventurous musicians compete to make uncomfortable noises; it is crude and seemingly beyond parody, yet consistently popular; and the music is pig-headedly uncommercial despite making a few labels, albeit briefly, wealthy.

This book meticulously explores the history and methodology of the genre, charting its aims and intentions, its crossovers to the mainstream, its successes and failures. It rigorously tracks how death metal developed from the bedrooms of Birmingham and Florida to its near-mainstream moment, and then to the murky cult status it enjoys today.