At the Gates - The Red in the Sky is Ours In a sea of brilliant death metal releases swaying from Possessed's debut "Seven Churches" through to the modern day, one album stands head and shoulders above it's peers. "The Red in the Sky is Ours" weaves a pattern of nihilistic melody with emotions pouring through the music like ruptured arteries. This album is an intimate and intricate combination of painfully brilliant vocals, blissfully dark lyrics and precisely developed instrumentation. With fluid rhythm yet unparalleled dissonance "The Red in the Sky Is Ours" delivers the unholiest of unholy messages of bitter loss and impending armageddon. Coined the fathers of melodic death metal, At the Gates' holistic approach to music demonstrates that Death Metal truly is an art. A deserved number one. The Chasm - Deathcult for Eternity: The Triumph Arguably the most accomplished band since the early 90's death metal scene, The Chasm have developed an alchemic sound which illustrates the majesty of death and mythology. Akin to the occult, each of their releases delivers a whurling sound of melody infused chaos and perhaps none more successfully than their third release "Deathcult for Eternity: The Triumph". With a gritty, muddy production, unpolished yet flawless musicianship, a sort of off key melody and howling vocals of insane dimensions, "Deathcult" is a 'triumph' of epic proportions. Influences hark back to early Slayer (namely "Hell Awaits") and hint towards touches of death metal such as God Macabre's "The Winterlong" or even Carnage's "Dark Recollections". However this likely underappreciated classic truly remains untained and original, delivering death metal that is sheer awe-inspiring incandescence. At the Gates - The Red in the Sky is Ours The term "perfect" is often thrown about without a great deal of thought put into its meaning, in a sense used as a colloquialism. It is a pretty safe bet to say that there probably isn't such thing as a perfect heavy metal album, nor piece of art in general. However, if perfection was ever reached, it would only be a shade or two away from the formidable and undeniably brilliant "The Red in the Sky is Ours". In the peak of death metal's The term "perfect" is often thrown about without a great deal of thought put into its meaning, in a sense used as a colloquialism. It is a pretty safe bet to say that there probably isn't such thing as a perfect heavy metal album, nor piece of art in general. However, if perfection was ever reached, it would only be a shade or two away from the formidable and undeniably brilliant "The Red in the Sky is Ours". With fluid rhythm yet unparalleled dissonance The Red in the Sky is Ours is compositional brilliance. Like many of its peers, it evidences technical ecstasy but, in contrast, is not paralyzed by talent. Emotions pour from each song like ruptured arteries. From the bitter screams of anguish through to the intricate layers of tremulous melody and harmonious instrumentation, a message of nihilism, loss and torment is delivered. A deserved number one, At the Gates - The Red in the Sky is Ours is innovative, dark, death metal beauty which 15 after its release, is still the benchmark for death metal, if not heavy metal. Summary of the List HailMetal.com returns in full force with yet another Top 50 List. This time, the topic is death metal (if that wasn't already obvious to you). Why death metal? Well for much the same reasons as we did the thrash list, we are working off what we currently have the most knowledge of. Most of the staff here are fairly death metal savy and as such we believe the ensuing list, whilst not going to please everyone, should have something for everyone, stir some heated debate and acknowledge as decent a breadth of death metal's contribution to music over the last 22 years (or thereabouts) as one possibly can, restricted to naming the "top 50 albums" of all time. The composition of the list was slightly different to that of the thrash list. Whilst in principal, it was the same idea (based on voting amongst the admins), weightings were implied on each of our individual knowledges and a hopefully less skewed or concentrated list has resulted (in english, unlike the thrash list, you won't see 4 or 5 albums by the big name acts). The change was in response to criticism of our thrash list, not that we think we got it incorrect, but just an acknowledgement to the fact that there are multiple approaches and interpretations of what could be considered "the greatest" of all time. Compared to the thrash list again, we have similarly taken a hard line as to what we consider eligible to death metal. Again there is room for interpretation, but to give you a flavour of how we drew the line in the sand, the most difficult was with the death / doom crossover - whilst Katatonia, Asphyx, Amorphis, Octobers Tide were considered in, My Dying Bride, Mournful Congregation, early Cathedral, Skepticism were all considered out. Other genre crossovers were less problematic, with only a handful of considerations such as Dissection and Zyklon ever considered for the death metal list (but in the end left out). The line was drawn between death leaning towards the "destructive" rather than having a "reconstructive" purpose. Equally, we took a pragmatic approach and considered what the natural reaction would be when considering what genre the band fell into. Naturally simple aesthetics were key in making this distinction. And while I don't intend to define the genre, I suspect you could infer a definition from the above, and whatever your opinion with regard to some grey area bands may be, take solice in the fact that if it is included or excluded from this list, it will be relative to other lists we have or will compose. The many difficulties in accomodating people's taste as well as some stubborn opinions (including my own) as well as our busy schedules made the list difficult to compose. Without dwelling on the latter, you will probably be able to instantly spot "gaps" in the list. But these are not indeed "gaps", but rather illustrations of a difference in opinion. For example, whilst I considered Crypt of Keberos' "World of Myths" mandatory listening, Goran leaned towards Bloodbath's "Nightmares Made Flesh", Luke preferred The Abyss "The Otherside" and Nick, Gorguts' "From Wisdom to Hate". None of the above made our list but were considered for the list and at the end of the day there unfortunately just wasn't enough room. Furthermore, we have gone with an approach of acknowledging only one album per band. Therefore, where you may question why we don't have something like "The Sumerian Cry" or "The Karelian Isthmus", it's not because we don't like the album, rather it was a case of saying that Death Metal, over 22 years has had more than 50 influential bands, and to try and narrow it down to less was more blasphemous than not individually acknowledging these aforementioned albums. We believe that the sentiment behind each album represented is also something of a representation of the bands full contribution to Death Metal as we know it. Furthermore, I will concede this Death Metal list has not been composed by 7 brutal death metal fans. Therefore, whilst there is some representation, brutal death fans are the most likely to be aggitated by this list, but c'est la vie. On that note, I will leave you with a list that will surely even rattle the very walls of hell with its unyielding respect for the most destructive forces in music "death metal". "I tear the skies with my bare hands. There is no death for me." - Tomas Lindberg ~ byrne