Technical death metal (sometimes called tech-death or progressive death metal) is a musical subgenre of death metal that focuses on complex rhythms, riffs and song structures. Technical experimentation in death metal began in the late '80s and early '90s by bands such as Death, Atheist and Cynic. In 1990, Nocturnus released their debut album, The Key, which was followed by Sarcófago's third album, The Laws of Scourge, featuring a change in their musical style, black metal/thrash metal to technical death metal. Atheist's second album, Unquestionable Presence, Pestilence's third album, Testimony of the Ancients, and Death's fourth album, Human, were all released the very next year. Human and later Death albums have proven especially influential on later '90s technical death metal bands. In 1991, New York's grindcore-influenced Suffocation released the Effigy of the Forgotten debut album, which focused on speed and brutality with "sophisticated" sense of songwriting and subsequently became groundbreaking in the genre.
Phil Freeman, ex-editor of Metal Edge, has described the sub-genre of technical death metal as "the hidden side of its genre, having more in common with prog-rock and jazz fusion than with the mechanistic, Satan-obsessed grinding that's the music's dominant public image."
Read more about Technical Death Metal: List of Technical Death Metal Bands
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