New York Brutal Death Metal: More Harm Than Good

To be honest, it is really hard to talk about this subject without upsetting a lot of people. First of all, I just want to say this before I get into the negative aspects I am going to talk about (band pic is Internal Bleeding. Notice how their bassist is dressed like a zoomer faggot?)

- I am not talking about every death metal band from New York / New Jersey. I am only talking about the ones that play in the specific brutal almost slam style that we credit the New York Death metal scene for. 

- Yes, I know Cannibal Corpse came from New York and was a great and huge influence in extreme metal. No, that does not refute any of my points.

- Yes, there are amazing bands that came from and were inspired by that scene. The title reads "more harm than good," which implies that there is some good.

- I understand that it is an unpopular opinion, so I do not expect the majority to agree with me on this.

It is insane to me how this scene simultanously produced some really good music, but in the same breath also led to the cultural decline of extreme metal. How did we get from great bands like Suffocation, Immolation, and Mortician (Mortician was never even good to begin with) to wigger slam slop? It is also really suspect how an insane amount of hipsters gravitate towards this specific style of death metal. Why?

The Beginning

New York death metal wasn't always this slopfest. While Suffocation is largely credited for inventing slam, their music at the time was still good and original. It sounds like it was made with intent. They were not following a trend at the time. They did not make music to sound brutal "for the memes." They put in effort to make their music memorable. I think Suffocation made good music, but that is the band that made all these problems begin. The slam riffs and the breakdowns were the downfall of us all. Liege of Inveracity (1991) was and still is an amazing song, and theres nothing inherently wrong about slam riffs and breakdowns. It worked for suffocation because they combined it with other things like insane drumming, great guitar solos, their technical riffing, and an evil atmosphere. The slam breakdown stuff was used more as a spice, not the entire meal. The slam worked because it interrupted the intensity, creating contrast in a song. (See iconic slam riff at 2:50 time stamp on video below)

Brutality over everything

By the late 1990's and early 2000's, everyone began embracing the slam riff. The groove-centric side of death metal was pushed to the  exaggerated extreme. Vocals became lower, guitars became chunkier, and before long an entire new subculture was born. It was fresh, new, insanely heavy and attracted a lot of people. It stripped death metal of everything that didn't make it brutal. But those other things, is what made death metal such an evil art. Soon the groove began replacing good songwriting. Instead of using slam riffs as puncuation, whole songs were built around them. Songs weren't songs anymore, it was just breakdown after breakdown after breakdown. One palm-muted chug blended into the next and one pig squeal blurred into another. 

The focus was on being as brutal as possible instead of being original or memorable. Heaviness was the sole metric of value instead of good songwriting or atmosphere. The whole scene turned into a dick measuring contest to see which band could "out-brutal" the other. Who can tune lower? Who's breakdown is slower? Who sounds more like a toilet bowl? Everyone became clones. In my opinion, even the earlier bands that hopped on to the trend like Skinless, Pyrexia, Dying Fetus and Dehumanized all blend into eachother.

It gets much worse in the early 2000's though. Bands like Devourment, and Waking the Cadaver used the slam formula to a t and then everyone just became clones of those bands. Bands like Analepsy, Vulvodynia, and Kraanium are wannabe clones. Super heavy, but never ever memorable. And now there are HUNDREDS of bands like this plaguing metal.

The production became clinical and formulaic. Death metal made properly BREATHES. The imperfections add to the atmosphere. But the era of brutal slamming death metal that came after Suffocation all sounded so strangely lifeless. Perfectly aligned, drums perfectly triggered, perfectly edited. There is no life in slam. It all just feels machine made, like a human had no part in making it.

The Original Sin

So, brutal slamming death metal sucks, how can this get worse? It does. The biggest sin that this scene commited was tying its identity with the New York Hardcore scene. Almost all of the bands are guilty of this, including Suffocation. I think the band that is the most guilty of this is Internal Bleeding. They openly incorporated hardcore rhythms and breakdowns into their writing.

Both scenes shared rehearsal spaces, venues, fans. NYDM stopped looking to death metal for it's identity and started looking to Hardcore. Bands like Waking The Cadaver wrote straight up beatdown. That same breakdown-first mentality eventually spread into hardcore-adjacent slam acts, modern downtempo bands, and later hybrid scenes. Fans themselves regularly describe slam as a natural extension of beatdown and hardcore mosh culture The vocals aren’t the monstrous, cavernous roar of Incantation or the twisted phrasing of Immolation. They’re confrontational, street-level, low IQ. And that’s where a lot of old-school death metal fans checked out, such as myself.

Because death metal (even at its most brutal) traditionally came from horror, chaos, occultism, alienation, technicality, or pure musical extremity. Hardcore brought something different: Moshing-first songwriting, tough guy image, posturing, and the god awful scene politics that had nothing to do with metal at all.

I am a big supporter of metal and hardcore staying seperate. No good comes out of combining the two. All that happens is a culture clash and having everyone water down eachother's scenes. The one time metal combined with hardcore, it gave birth to some of the WORST music genres imaginable such as Deathcore and Wigger Slam which I also wrote an article about. Whenever you combine metal with hardcore, everything gets watered down / formulaic and there is no artistry left. 

New York slam didn’t just borrow from hardcore. Hardcore eventually became the lens through which slam judged itself: not by riffs, not by atmosphere, not by good song writing, but by "will kids spin kick and two-step to this?" New York Death metal evolved into something that isn't death metal anymore. It is pit music with awful vocals.

The Hipster Problem

New York slam's obsession turned music into groovy breakdown worship. Do you know what accessible genres like Hardcore attract? : HIPSTERS.

In my opinion Hardcore has always been a hipster-ridden genre full of people who obsess over image and cultural capital. They love that they can listen to accessible music while also pretending to be "niche" and and obscure for cool points. That is the exact attitude that NYDM brought into Death Metal, because slam was such an easy genre to package. It didn't come with a lifestyle, or beliefs, or anything of substance; it just promised you groovy breakdowns and spin kicks. Just low IQ fun.

I know I call these people hipsters but it is because I don't know what else to call them. The truth is that the easiest way to dismiss the modern slam audience is to call them tourists, hipsters, or posers. And it is usually wrong. A lot of these people genuinely love this music. They buy the records, go to shows, support the underground, and genuinley enjoy themselves. That’s what makes the problem more complicated. The issue isn’t that they’re fake. The issue is that their taste has helped reward some of the weakest instincts in extreme music. Because New York slam and the culture that grew around it did something death metal had historically resisted: it became accessible. Not comercially or radio accessible but CULTURALLY accessible. You don’t need to understand riffcraft, atmosphere, phrasing, tension, composition, or lineage. All you need to understand is: Big drop. Heavy chug. Deep guttural. Crowd moves. And that’s exactly why it spread. That accessibility and shock value grab changed what musicians started to value. And once that mindset spreads, the influence doesn’t stay inside slam. It leaks into every facet of death metal. Suddenly songs are written backward, from the mosh part outward. It isn't art anymore. It's party music. Death Metal's easiest, bluntest, most immediately digestible forms started teaching people that shock value and surface impact was the same thing as depth. Once a scene starts confusing those two things, it doesn’t stop being heavy but....

It just slowly stops being interesting.

Even worse, the scene is now full of people with no substance, just like the music itself.

NOTE: I apologize for my sloppy writing on this. It is my first long form post in a while and I just wanted to get something out there and get my point across. I did not go through the polishing phase like I usually do.