Drummers use blast beats and rapid double bass, guitarists play fast tremolo-picked riffs, and songs change tempo often. Lyrics tend toward horror and violence. It grew out of thrash metal in the mid-1980s, with Florida as its first major center and a second early scene in Sweden. It is lower and more guttural than thrash, and less raw and high-pitched than black metal.
Artists it is known for: Death, Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse, Obituary.
About 3,000 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have death metal among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Death Metal artists
Gojira
Slayer
Death
Sepultura
Opeth
Lamb of God
Lorna Shore
Cannibal Corpse
Suicide Silence
Children Of Bodom
The death metal artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.
Sources
The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.