It's weird to think that for a brief moment in time Gorefest were Nuclear Blast's biggest selling band.

They were big in Germany and Holland apparently but nowhere else. I don't recall anyone down here every talking about them in the mid 90's.

Oh, another one of those fucking situations eh?

Bloody hell! There have been at least a handful of those in the last few years I think. It sends out confusing signals to fans and turns them off.

Queensryche managed to get away with it because they were able to retain the name, but the Entombed situation was a really sad story.

I really like the Incubus demo too but "The Key" & the self-titled Nocturnus single were also worth checking out. None are essential listening though.

It didn't hurt that the couple of studio albums with Todd La Torre were simply better releases than anything the band had done since the mid-90's. I still don't have much time for those two records though. 1994's "Promised Land" was the last Queensrÿche album I genuinely enjoyed.

Condition Human is their best since Promised Land imo, but yes they aren't the band they used to be.

Promised Land was the last QR album with the classic lineup worth bothering with.

Someone please try and sell me on the idea of DM. I can't promise to like it but I will listen to classic album recs.

Cant remember the first DM band I heard! First thrash was deffo Metallica. Surely I should remeber something as important as that! Scream Bloody Gore comes to mind. And Deicide. (I remember it was Morbid Angel)

The very first death metal bands I had heard must have been Death and Morbid Angel I suppose. I remember listening to ''Rapture'' and asking my dad what that word meant.

For me it was definitely Death's "Leprosy".

The death metal album. First one I heard too, it's never been bettered.

I'd take plenty of other 80s death metal albums over Leprosy such as Bestial Devastation/Morbid Visions, Bloody Vengeance, Slowly We Rot, Severed Survival, Seven Churches, Altars of Madness and Consuming Impulse.

Madness. My views on pre-split Autopsy are well known by now, but I'd say that Morbid Angel, Obituary and Pestilence each blew those respective albums away with their follow-ups (yes, I know they were all '90s releases) and putting those first two Sepultura releases in the same league as any of those albums is just insane. Seven Churches is alright, but never impressed me much.

Blessed Are the Sick is alright, but the production doesn't do the songwriting justice not to mention it just doesn't sound as coherent as AoM.

I could never get into Cause of Death as I find it rather...plodding whereas the debut just comes off a bit more vicious to me.

Testimony of the Ancients works as background music. It was the first death metal CD that I had bought, but I really got bored of it after a couple of years. To me it's just a bit too restrained sounding, missing the powerful riffwork of MM and CI, even if I still love the guitar leads on that record. Also Mameli is no van Drunen but whatever.

It's all subjective obviously, but to me there's no comparison between those albums Blessed..., Cause... and Testimony... are the sound of bands who've finetuned their craft to its zenith. The preceding albums are all great of course, but are overshadowed by their follow-ups. My only issue with any of those three would be the interludes/intros on Testimony..., they're just annoying.

Posessed - Seven Churches
Morbid Angel - Alters Of Madness
Entombed - Left Hand Path
Dismember - Like An Everflowing Stream
Incantation - Onward to Golgotha

I'd go for them as a basic 5 to try.

I suppose it would help to know what you like at the moment, to see if there was an obvious 'route' into the genre.

I think if you have to be sold on anything it probably isn't for you

Whilst I get what your saying, peoples tastes change over time.

I never used to be big into it, but then the more I got into black metal and more extreme stuff the more I could tolerate it, and even then it was only the ones with really strong thrashy blast beats like the Swedish stuff. But then I kind of got into Punk, and retrospectively got into some of the earlier death metal bands like Seven Churches and Scream Bloody Gore. And the thing was with every new band I got into, the more familiar I got with the genre and it's conventions, the more I found other new bands. It took a long time before I got into Incantation for example, but one day I just downloaded their first three albums, put it on my running playlist and it clicked. I think sometimes you just need that one album to hook you. For me albums like Winterwolfs Cycle of the Werewolf and The Chasm's Farseeing The Paranormal Abysm were just as important to me getting into the genre as Alters of Madness and From Beyond were. Something clicked with those albums which opened me up to other stuff. And then on the other hand, when I first heard Soulside Journey I wasn't into it at all, but once I'd get my head around Carnage and Dismember and the like, going back to Soulside made a lot more sense. I think a lot of music is built on frames of reference and building an understanding of the 'language' of the genre, and how it should be listened to.

Good point. For me certain albums don't click until I try them years again after having them heard for the first time. I recall hearing Seven Churches for the first time and I wasn't blown away by it. I remember hearing None So Vile for the first time and thought it was too br00tal for my taste. Nowadays I like both albums a lot.

Yeah my quote was a bit dickish.

SLAYYYYYYYEEEERRRRRRR!

I mostly agree with this.

Let's put it this way, when I first heard death metal I didn't love it, but I was very intrigued and wanted to hear more to 'understand' it.

I agree with Anni's point that people's change over time, but I think often the reason they never got into something is because they weren't exposed to the right thing at the right time etc.

On a related note, I'm also a firm believer that people who claim that they really into something then 'got over it' were probably never really into it at all or it was just a phase they went through.

I had a guy say to me the other day that he used to watch a lot of 'art films' at university but he 'got over it'. In reality he watched a few handfuls of films during his film studies courses and probably enjoyed the novelty of it but never really understood what he was watching.

Most of the guys I went to school with who were into metal and are now 'over it' are in the same boat. They liked it for a few years in their teens and early 20's, never bought many albums, never watched the scene too closely etc.

I know people are very resistant to that kind of opinion/interpretation of tastes/interests, but I don't care. I'm not trying to be politically correct. I honestly think that most people who make those claims were just never really into the things they claimed to be into that seriously.