Hall of Fame

For five Texans, timing’s always been a cruel, heartless bitch. But that didn’t stop Solitude from transforming under threat of legal action into Solitude Aeturnus, landing a record deal with Roadrunner on the strength of a single demo and issuing two critical full-lengths for the ascendant international thereafter.

Floor’s history is fraught with turmoil, disappointment and what could have been. Yet, between three untimely breakups, countless empty-room performances, super-short stints on various record labels and a revolving cast of collaborators, Floor crafted the full-length of full-lengths, the heaviest of heavies, the mountain of mountains.

Contrary to popular belief, Carcass’s fourth full-length wasn’t the result of a bunch of product guys, A&R gurus and major label marketing geniuses.

Sometimes the circumstances surrounding an album are just as important to its status as a Hall of Fame inductee as the music itself. As you’ll read in the pages that follow, this is definitely one of those instances.

Before bastard sons begat cunting daughters, flyswatter stakes were driven through chests and pleasures thought unobtained fully experienced, California thrashers Slayer were hell-bent on leveling not just previous milestones, but any band with an inkling of heaviness.

Before there was death-thrash or thrashy death, there was Sepultura, lovingly pronounced either Seh-poll-tour-a or Sep-ull-trah by many a hesher. Contrary to popular opinion at the time, Sepultura were not from the deepest parts of the Amazon or Brazil’s most violent of favelas.

When Sarcófago sacrilegiously congealed in a plastic bowl of hate, frustration, rebellion, fermented sugarcane juice and fuck fluid, Phil Collins’ “Sussudio” and Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” were number one hits on the Billboard chart.

Whether it’s the weather, the water, chowda or some other supernatural force at play, Massachusetts has struck again with venerated metalcore (a deprecated term replaced by the New Wave of American Heavy Metal) outfit Killswitch Engage.

After nearly a decade of European dominance of all things anti-Abrahamic metal—starting with Bathory’s Viking-themed classic Hammerheart—Agalloch issued debut album Pale Folklore.

Four fellow dragon aficionados ensconced in the upper reaches of a Chinatown rehearsal loft they sublet with Henry Rollins (and a particularly stouthearted mouse) summoned into being the 1994 hardcore magnum opus Scratch the Surface.

Formed out of teenage jitters, a can-/will-do work ethic and long-term (possibly unhealthy) exposure to Neurosis, Swans and the Melvins, Boston’s Isis were in many respects different from what the rest of New England had to offer in the late ’90s.

Nuclear death were one of those bands that you really had to be there for. Formed in the depths of the Arizona desert in 1986 and dragged kicking and screaming through metal’s collective consciousness until 2000, the original trio was still in high school when they concocted what was to become their most beloved and influential recording.

What started out as a hobby between friends—principally guitarist/vocalist John Gallagher and bassist/vocalist Jason Netherton—in ’93, eventually turned into a career- and genre-defining powerhouse six years later. Though at the time, the Maryland-based outfit would be hard-pressed to believe it.

The era surrounding the release of Total Destruction, the 1993 sophomore album by New York City noiseniks Unsane, took Chris Spencer’s life on the craziest of rollercoaster rides.

Rust in Peace, as you will learn, wasn’t written in a day. It wasn’t even written in the studio—well, Dave Ellefson’s “Dawn Patrol” was birthed there—over many months, like so many records of the day were.

Formed in the Virginia/DC area in the mid-’80s, a region then more known for its hardcore punk than metal, Deceased slowly built a loyal local fan base as that decade came to an end, kids attracted to the band’s unique take on the nascent death metal sound.

No strangers to the north east thrash metal scene—then dominated by Hall of Famers Anthrax—New Jerseyans Overkill famously peeked out from the underground on ‘88’s Under the Influence.

This is the album that solidified Diamond’s legend as not only one of the great metal vocalists of all time, but a great horror storyteller (and songwriter) with a flair for the dramatic.

Voivod might have set the standard for Québec heavy metal with their highly idiosyncratic sound, but it was death metal that was embraced the most by the French Canadian province when the 1990s rolled around.

While society feared the collapse of the wired world, Lorrain, Davis and the Burdettes feared having to play high-velocity, crusty hardcore for the same people in the same venues until Y3K, or until they kicked the collective bucket, whichever came first.

I distinctly recall the first time I heard Ministry’s The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste.

The Queensrÿche of today hardly resembles the leather-clad, high energy band of young metallers that burst onto the global underground in 1983.

It was only 18 years ago when Rorschach’s second album, Protestant, was released, but man, things were so very different. There was no Internet to help with communication or songwriting; if you wanted to write tunes, a bunch of people had to get face-to-face in a room.

Formed in 1991 in Ipswich, about 82 miles northeast of London, Cradle of Filth started out as, to quote frontman Dani Filth, a “gore-flecked death metal” band.

The story of the creation of Coroner’s No More Color is one absent of any of the hardship, debauchery and/or numerous lineup changes that have plagued many of the albums previously anointed official badass status in our esteemed Hall.

Moored by American funk and disco, reggae, dub, krautrock and the individual members’ sonic predilections, Killing Joke was more than the sum of its parts. It was a scene unto itself.

In 1993, Burzum mastermind and sole member Varg “Count Grishnackh” Vikernes both embodied Norwegian black metal’s violent strain of pagan nihilism and sought to defy the genre’s increasingly stultifying conventions.

It would be completely accurate to say that Melissa is the greatest album ever named after an errant human skull, but it would also be a ridiculously short sell.

OK, so the Discovery Channel has Shark Week. Pretty cool series about fish at the top of the oceanic food chain. For the Deciblog, we’re officially calling this week (February 14th – February 20th) Viking Week. No, we don’ t have the budget to film bloody reenactments, travel to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, or the…

In the run leading up to 1991’s Goat, “Tight N Shiny”—a corrosive instrumental from the band’s transitional LP Head—offered a regular excuse for Yow to take a much-needed smoke break and introduce the unsuspecting audience to the art of genital origami.