06MELODIC DEATH, BLACK & DOOM METAL
Metal's northern European wing — harmonised minor riffs, harsh vocals, and a taste for the elegiac
WHAT IT IS / WHEN
Two Scandinavian scenes formed almost simultaneously around 1990: Gothenburg's melodic death metal, which married thrash speed to twin harmonised guitar lines, and Norwegian black metal, which went the other way into treble, tremolo and atmosphere. Britain's Peaceville bands — Anathema, Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride — supplied the doom-laden third strand, and several of these bands ended up somewhere else entirely: Anathema became an atmospheric rock act, Enslaved a progressive one.
SIGNIFICANT ARTISTS
At the Gates, In Flames and Dark Tranquillity in Gothenburg; Enslaved, Emperor and Ulver in Norway; Amorphis in Finland; Anathema and Paradise Lost in England; Australia's Be'lakor and the atmospheric black metal of Sweden's Lustre represent the long tail.
TRIVIA
Amorphis built Tales from the Thousand Lakes (1994) entirely on verses from the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic assembled from oral folk poetry in the 1830s — a death metal album whose lyrics are 19th-century ethnography. Anathema, meanwhile, abandoned growled vocals after 1996 and by 2010 were making records that share more with Pink Floyd than with anything in this list.
SONIC SIGNATURE
Guitars tuned down and tracked in harmonised pairs — thirds and sixths over a minor or Phrygian tonality — which is what makes the aggression sound mournful rather than angry. Drums use blast beats and double kick but resolve into half-time for the melodic passages. Vocals are growled or shrieked, mixed lower than in American metal so the guitars carry the melody.
KEY GEAR
Ibanez and Jackson guitars into Peavey 5150 and Marshall JCM800 heads; the Boss HM-2 pedal, cranked flat out, is the entire Swedish guitar sound. Doom and atmospheric acts add Mellotron, real strings and clean-channel Fender amps. Drums are frequently triggered for the fast passages and left acoustic for the slow ones.
RATIONALE & PRODUCTION
The Gothenburg records were cut at Studio Fredman with heavily gated, tightly edited drums and a scooped guitar tone. Black metal went the opposite way on purpose — thin, hissing, deliberately lo-fi productions meant to sound like a rehearsal-room tape. Modern releases in both traditions are dense and loud, and the melodic layers are usually quadruple-tracked so the harmony survives the compression.
TRACKS IN THIS GENRE
Each control plays a ten-second excerpt of the track, taken from its catalogue preview clip.
- Deep - RemasteredAnathema
- One Last Goodbye - RemasteredAnathema
- AngelicaAnathema
- House of SleepAmorphis
- By Moon and StarBe'lakor
- Part 1Lustre
- What Else Is There - Bonus VersionEnslaved
- FrostEnslaved