In the vast world of music, there is one type of music that most likely caused the most amounts

of controversy over the years in history. This genre of music is known as metal. Metal music has generally been known to be an unconventional and controversial style due to its ferocious musicality, lyrics and general atmosphere. As a matter of fact, it is quite a mainstream style of music, due to the style being around for quite a long time (can be traced back to the late 60s and early 70s, with bands like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest). Bands like Metallica, Slayer and Iron Maiden are well known in pop culture due to radio play, various promotional appearances and more. But, beneath this mainstream culture of metal lies a very underground style of metal called death metal. It is possibly the most criticized and controversial metal subgenre due to its fast paced music, extreme vocals and lyrics, and dark atmosphere. Many people criticize the genre for sounding like noise or random instrument bashing, for its childish lyrics and cookie monster vocals, and overall extremity. In this essay, I will confidently disprove these statements. Although the subgenre of death metal can at first seem childish (lyrically) and just noise (musically), it is in fact a very intellectual, technically demanding, creative and diverse subgenre.

In death metal, the instrumentation plays perhaps the largest part in the subgenre, and can also diversify subgenres of death metal itself. First, death metal songs are usually at a high tempo (four times as fast as the average pop song), use complex structure (not the standard verse/chorus structure), and also contains quick tempo and time signature changes. Going by individual instruments, the guitar parts are usually up front in the mix of a death metal song. Guitars are not meant to be melodic within death metal, and (as mentioned before) are used to make a dark atmosphere, with very low notes without implementing actual guitar chords (a combination of notes at once, whereas death metal uses individual notes one at a time). Many advanced techniques are used in the guitar playing such as: very fast picking tapping and sweeping (used during solos, in which both require synchronization with your right and left hands, and more complex than regular strumming). An example of fast picking can be found in the song Lash By Lash by Spawn of Possession, and an example of sweep picking can be found in the song Quantum Catastrophe by Brain Drill. The next main instrument in death metal is the drums, which require a high degree of stamina/endurance to play at such high tempos. Many intricate techniques are used in the drumming, such as being able to play the bass pedal very quickly, and play a very challenging technique called the blast beat (in which the bass drum, snare and a cymbal are both hit at the same time at high tempos). To listen to an example of these techniques, listen to the song Saligia by Origin.

Now you are probably asking yourself, Sure, you can have all of these techniques, doesnt mean that the songs and the genre are good as a whole, and wouldnt the genre become stale very quickly? First,