Chris Dick

Tales From the Thousand Lakes is a pivotal album. Not just for Amorphis—if it weren’t for loads of ambition, wide-open minds and a bit of dumb luck, this induction would never be—but for death metal post-1994.

Contrary to popular belief, the New Wave of Swedish Death Metal—also known by its acronym NWOSDM or synonym “The Gothenburg Sound”—wasn’t a cohesive movement.

If black metal was defined by a single year, it would have to be 1994.

Focus almost never happened. Hurricane Andrew (a Category 5 storm that devastated South Florida in 1992), bassists frequently exiting and three separate visits to Morrisound Studios could’ve cost the world Cynic.

Nile didn’t play cribbage with the Lord of all Fevers and Plagues. Entrails were never ripped from an unfortunate virgin’s cunt as far as we know.

There is influence and under the influence. California’s Autopsy were both.

“To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women,” so said Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan in 1982’s Conan the Barbarian when asked, “What is best in life?”

Opeth’s Orchid existed among tape traders for almost a full year, either as a partial or full album with the songs cut in random places, before Candlelight unfurled it upon an unsuspecting public in May 1995.

Katatonia’s initial incarnation as a black doom outfit—replete with corpsepaint, weapons, stage names like Lord Seth and Blackheim, and song titles “Without God” and “Palace of Frost”—probably caught as many Darkthrone acolytes off guard as it did followers of England’s doom metal “big three.”