It's interesting to see almost no one mentions any releases from the mid-90s onwards. I wonder why that is? My first love in music was extreme metal (death & black and some grindcore) when I was in high school, 1996 to 2000. Naturally, I liked a lot of albums that were released at that time or in the early 90s. Most of that stuff I no longer like, but some albums are still standouts for me and no one has mentioned them here, such as Pierced from Within by Suffocation, Ravishing Grimness by Darkthrone, Rebel Extravaganza by Satyricon, the s/t album by Thorns, Wolfs Lair Abyss by Mayhem, Formulas Fatal to the Flesh by Morbid Angel, the first Zyklon album... and to include grindcore too, The Inalienable Dreamless by Discordance Axis, the Gridlink albums or Honky Reduction by Agoraphobic Nosebleed...
I haven't been following the extreme metal scene for more than a decade now, but there surely must be great albums that continue to push and widen boundaries. Or am I wrong?
I suppose most people writing in this thread became metals fans in the 80s and they like the atmosphere of metal albums from that time (obviously stuff from later decades doesn't have that aura any more). I've personally found only some 80s albums that I like: Slayer's albums from Reign in Blood onwards, for example. I never liked "classic" albums exactly due to their 80s "vibe". I mean stuff like the first 2 Morbid Angel albums, the first Slayer (the second one is OK), the first 3 Death albums, early Obituary etc... I guess if I were "raised" on them, I might think differently (though this is no guarantee), but having been exposed to (in my view) better written/better produced/better played, more extreme metal first for me means I just can't appreciate what others consider classics. And I won't even mention the (again, for me) laughable album covers, song and album titles and band images of the 80s.
