The music scene of Scandinavia after Mayhem

People who grew up listening to heavy genres such as metal music, mostly all started with bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Metallica, Megadeth, Kiss and all those early classic bands. Most of these bands are from United States of America or from Great Britain. Over time, the teen period boiling blood with rage and passion wore off as we all grow up, so does the music taste took a different turn for the majority of us. For those who remained true to the heavy world of metal, it is time to start hunting down other great metal bands from all over the globe.

The Gothenburg metal music scene

Gothenburg is one of the largest cities in Sweden and it is considered to be the fifth largest city in the Nordic Countries. The sound of Gothenburg is also known as, most commonly, “Melodic death metal” or “Gothenburg melodic death metal” or “Melodeath”. The bands performing in these genres most often incorporate elements of death metal and they are distinguishable for having more melodic riffs and solos than the pure death metal riffs.

The sound and instrumentation often comes in with BOSS’s HM-2 heavy metal distortion effect pedal with a cleaner recordings. This genre also often incorporate elements from NWOBH or new wave of British heavy metal guitar lines like dual guitar attacks. Melodic death metal was led by the then true acts like ‘At the Gates’, ‘In Flames’ and ‘Dark Tranquillity’. Although this particular scene often credit American band such as Carcass and their heaviest album like ‘Heartwork’ in particular.

Albums like ‘Slaughter of the soul’ from At the Gates and ‘The jester race’ from In Flames and ‘The gallery’ from Dark Tranquillity heavily defined the whole melodic death metal scene. Subsequent popular bands of the time such as Children of Bodom, Arch Enemy, Amon Amarth, The Black Dahlia Murder and Soilwork from the late 1990s and early 2000s were born.

The Stockholm metal music scene

With the Stockholm metal music scene, Stockholm saw the rise of the raw deadliest power of the classic death metal and power metal. The same guitar pedal technique popularised and defined the sound of the Stockholm metal scene. The very first wave of Swedish death metal scene arose in the early 1990s during the Mayhem madness. This is the time when bands like Carnage, Nihilist and Morbid were born.  All three of them later formed the top-notch band like Entombed, Dismember and Unleashed.

All these scenes gave a way to the new bands like Meshuggah, Amon Amarth, Opeth, Cemetery, Avatar and the Haunted which we all know so well. If you haven’t dug these bands, doing so is certainly worth the lifetime!