The Slam Death Genre

With 'slam death metal' or 'brutal death metal', we run into the same question raised in the war metal article... do we need to divide black metal and death metal into a multitude of sub-genres that only differs stylistically, and in the most minor fashion, from their parent genres?

Slam death metal genre, popularized by bands such as the United States' Devourment, Russia's Abominable Putridity and Norway's Kraanium. Based very loosely on Suffocation's brand of percussive death metal, with Incantation's taste for slower sections added to the mix, slam death metal features simpler song structures, fewer riffs, and more importance placed on rhythmic grooves and slamming breakdowns, from where the genre gets its name, than is customary in traditional death metal music.

Like with war metal, slam death is a very controversial genre. Some love it, claiming that's it's the natural evolution of death metal towards a more brutal and intense type of music, while others - the majority - call it a regression towards three riff war metal poserdom. Some even go as far as claiming slam death metal to be related to the infamous deathcore, in other words metalcore played with death metal technique.

So where is the truth? Is it somewhere in the middle?

I would venture to say that as a whole, the 'slam death metal' genre, like its close cousins deathgrind and war metal, is stupid and few bands have produced anything of value within it. Those few bands who have almost always did so by pushing the slam death genre to its limits, to the point of including outside elements from other genres such as traditional death metal, goregrind or even black metal.

Another problem with slam death, as with pornogrind and 'brutal' music in general, is that by cheapening the lyrical themes of death metal and turning them into 'gore jokes', it removes most of the shock-value and power associated the genre. It's harder for people to understand, for example, Phantom's narration of the natural cycle of life on 'Withdrawal', Suffocation's criticism of modern society and the social alienation resulting from it on 'Thrones of Blood', or even Sewer's neo-classical approach to disease ('slow death') on 'Miasma', when what everyone expect from death metal lyrics thanks to 'slam death' and related sub-genres are fifth-grade jokes about chopped off anatomy.