As part of Terrorizer magazine's four issue death metal special, they have compiled a list of the top 40 death metal records. Here it is in its fulsome glory:

1. Morbid Angel - Altars of Madness
2. Deicide - Deicide
3. Entombed - Left Hand Path
4. Death - Leprosy
5. Carcass - Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious
6. Suffocation - Effigy of the Forgotten
7. Obituary - Slowly We Rot
8. Morbid Angel - Blessed Are the Sick
9. Autopsy - Mental Funeral
10. Atheist - Unquestionable Presence
11. Repulsion - Horrified
12. Cannibal Corpse - Tomb of the Mutilated
13. Death - Human
14. Nile - Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka
15. At The Gates - Slaughter of the Soul
16. Sepultura - Arise
17. Bolt Thrower - Realm of Chaos
18. Carcass - Symphonies of Sickness
19. Massacre - From Beyond
20. Dismember - Like an Ever Flowing Stream
21. Nile - Black Seeds of Vengeance
22. Sepultura - Beneath the Remains
23. Carcass - Heartwork
24. Pestilence - Testimony of the Ancients
25. Cynic - Focus
26. Cryptopsy - None So Vile
27. Cancer - Death Shall Rise
28. Carnage - Dark Recollections
29. Obituary - Cause of Death
30. Death - Scream Bloody Gore
31. Napalm Death - Harmony Corruption
32. Bolt Thrower - Warmaster
33. Vader - De Profundis
34. Entombed - Clandestine
35. Malevolent Creation - Retribution
36. Death - Symbolic
37. Darkthrone - Soulside Journey
38. Gorguts - Obscura
39. Nocturnus - The Key
40. Immolation - Failures For Gods


Darkthrone? Get fucked. Anyway, feel free to discuss this first-wave-of-death-metal-heavy selection.

Oh, the albums I own are marked in bold - not many it has to be said!

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Unsatisfactory. And since when are Atheist, Cynic and Sepultura death metal?


I marked the ones that I am very familiar with.

1. Morbid Angel - Altars of Madness
2. Deicide - Deicide
3. Entombed - Left Hand Path
4. Death - Leprosy
5. Carcass - Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious
6. Suffocation - Effigy of the Forgotten
7. Obituary - Slowly We Rot
8. Morbid Angel - Blessed Are the Sick
9. Autopsy - Mental Funeral
10. Atheist - Unquestionable Presence
11. Repulsion - Horrified
12. Cannibal Corpse - Tomb of the Mutilated
13. Death - Human
14. Nile - Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka
15. At The Gates - Slaughter of the Soul
16. Sepultura - Arise
17. Bolt Thrower - Realm of Chaos
18. Carcass - Symphonies of Sickness
19. Massacre - From Beyond
20. Dismember - Like an Ever Flowing Stream
21. Nile - Black Seeds of Vengeance
22. Sepultura - Beneath the Remains
23. Carcass - Heartwork
24. Pestilence - Testimony of the Ancients
25. Cynic - Focus
26. Cryptopsy - None So Vile
27. Cancer - Death Shall Rise
28. Carnage - Dark Recollections
29. Obituary - Cause of Death
30. Death - Scream Bloody Gore
31. Napalm Death - Harmony Corruption
32. Bolt Thrower - Warmaster
33. Vader - De Profundis
34. Entombed - Clandestine
35. Malevolent Creation - Retribution
36. Death - Symbolic
37. Darkthrone - Soulside Journey
38. Gorguts - Obscura
39. Nocturnus - The Key
40. Immolation - Failures For Gods

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That's a terrible list..especially "Leprosy" being so high.

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holy shit, i've actually listened to all those albums. how Altars is above Blessed is beyond me. same goes for the fuckin unbelievable absence of Deicide's Legion when their inferior self-titled is there.

How could they pick Leprosy over Human? Leprosy is by far the worst Death album imo.

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What is Darkthrone doing on there? Terrible poopy list.

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Meh-list. Magazines should stop making 'best of'-list because they're subjective goddamnit. I'm not interested in what THEY think are the top 40 death metal albums, because I probably wouldn't agree anyway.

Yeah, the inclusion of Sepultura and Darkthrone was baffling to say the least. In Beneath the Remains I can sort of hear some death metal there but Arise is just straight up thrash.

I was quite surprised at how heavily the list was orientated towards the initial period of death metal's fruition - Morbid Angel, Obituary, Cannibal Corpse, Deicide, etc. I thought there'd be a few more "modern" records in there. Only 10 of that list are post-1992, which means that 75% of the top 40 are from an era which comprises just a quarter of the time that death metal has been in existence. Even more startling is that only one of those records was released in this century (Black Seeds of Vengeance) and even then that was unveiled in 2000.

So, either death metal has been waning since '92 or the journalists responsible for the list are trying to prove how old-school they are and looking back with rose-tinted glasses. I can't believe that there wasn't a place on that list for In Their Darkened Shrines, Pierced From Within or And Then You'll Beg, particularly when the aforementioned Darkthrone and Sepultura are listed.

Anyway, I'd actually be quite interested to read people's views on post-2000 death metal in comparison to the "golden age" of death metal between 1987 and 1992. I think there have been some very impressive offerings in the last 6 years or so and that just because they're relatively new does not preclude them from greatness.

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interesting point john

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Well, I think this list is pretty good. Not perfect, but then again, nothing is.

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Battlelore is decent....but then again i think they claim to be death metal when their not.

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I am surprised they chose that CC album to be on there. Then again, i ama bigger fan of corpsegrinder. They shoud have had Gore Obsessed or the Wretched Spawn. Not a very satisfying list overall

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lol awful

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Na like they claim to be deathmetal but by the sound of them i can't belive it.

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Well they are apart of the whole viking/celtic/pagan/folk/whatever you wanna call it/death metal.

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Pretty retarded list.
Carcass, Death, Morbid Angel, Nile, Sepultura, Bolt Thrower are all mentioned at least twice.

That doesn't make sense, no "best of list" should have two albums from any one band...choose their best. Like when Rolling Stone had the "Top 500 Albums of All Time" the Beatles had 4 in the top 10, bull shit. If you want to put them at #1 that's fine, but 4 of 10?

Basically the editors don't understand that some of the best shit isn't the most popular.

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You Should Listen To DArkthrone's Soulside journey

This list, as all list zines do, is shit

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A list can have two releases from the same band if they've been significant impacts on the genre.

Those Death albums are placed terribly, and as everyone already said Leprosy should not be before Symbolic or Human (and in my opinion, on the list).

Mansley, whats up with you not owning any Death?

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I have Spiritual Healing and The Sound of Perseverance - I will get round to procuring the others, I promise!

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Fuck magazine lists. Everyone has different taste, the list would probably be totally different with another journalist.

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Agreed on both counts. I would have put Blessed are the Sick as the best DM album of all time and Legion somewhere in the top 10. I also would have put Pierced from Within and Gallery of Suicide on there. I'd suggest we all construct our own top 40's, but after about 5 people do it, no one is going to have the time to actually check out other people's lists and it would be pointless and wasted effort.

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All considered, I think the list isn't too bad. Of course it doesn't reflect my opinions but it takes a lot of different things in consideration, weighing towards some more than others.

Is this list based on sales? That may explain the lack of anything very recent.

I thought that the death albums were in screwy order. I really don't like human at all. (l love death, don't get me wrong, this one, was just bleaahh, too plain) should have been: Leprosy
Individual Thought Patterns
Symbolic
TSOP
TSOP was great, but his rasp was very high pitched. It was much more catchy than most of the albums (except for symbolic). but this is a death metal list. not a metal or prog list. I think TSOP and Smbolic are better albums overall, but aren't as hard as heavy as leprosy. iTP was very borderline,
Tough choices here with death. Chuck never makes it easy

Doesn't matter at all acutally. Whenever you make a best of, it CONSTANTLY changes, at least for me it does.

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There's no rule against putting more than one album from the same band in a 'best of' list. If some band has made two albums that are better than everybody else's, they should be applauded for it, not have it ignored due to a technicality. Though there's something to say for limiting the number of albums a single band can have on there, because we have a tendency to just start throwing them up there if we don't limit ourselves.

I don't have a problem with this list, primarily because I really don't give a shit about the top 40 death metal albums of all time according to some magazine I have no interest in reading. Still, even I'd have more recent death metal on there than this list has.

hold on a sec there. that Darkthrone cd on that list is very unlike any of Darkthrones other releases. its more death metal than their latter releases

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Ok I can agree with that, but for this list...no.

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The list is based on, presumably, the opinions of all the journalists at Terrorizer since not one journalist was ascribed as compiling the article.

My brother owns that Darkthrone record and wouldn't describe it as death metal regardless of how one defines the genre.

As PST has already mentioned, I'd place a few more recent releases on there (In Their Darkened Shrines, Demigod and And Then You'll Beg just to name three off the top of my head). It appears that some bands have made the list purely out of nostalgia towards "the good ol' days".

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I can't really criticize for nostalgia, except to the extent that it assumes that death metal is dead. Now, in my opinion, death metal is merely mostly dead, not all dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. And even the slightest signs of life produce in large ways every now and then.

That said, I personally wouldn't be comfortable doing a 'top 20' or whatever list unless the genre in question was dead. And, if I considered death metal long dead, I'd probably just throw a bunch of the bands' names on some list and collect my journalist paycheck. Then I'd shoot myself in the fucking throat for ever being a journalist (or for lying to music fans).