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Description
New Wave of OSDM (Old School Death Metal) is a 2010s–present revival movement that resurrects the aesthetics, riffcraft, and production ethos of late-1980s/early-1990s death metal. It favors down‑tuned guitars, chromatic riffing, guttural vocals, and an organic, unpolished sound that feels tactile and oppressive rather than hyper‑edited.
Stylistically it triangulates the Floridian school’s technical menace, the Incantation/Autopsy murk and doom-laden crawl, and the Swedish HM‑2 “buzzsaw” bite—often within the same album. Songs pivot between d‑beat churn, mid‑paced stomps, lurching death‑doom passages, and short blasts, with bass prominent in the mix and drums captured with room ambience. Lyrically and visually, the movement leans on cosmic horror, rot, mysticism, war, and underground tape‑trader aesthetics, sustained by DIY labels and a thriving cassette/vinyl culture.
Rather than museum‑piece nostalgia, the scene treats classic techniques as living practice: updating arrangement flow, atmosphere, and harmonic color while preserving the genre’s primal heft.
History
The seeds of the New Wave of OSDM were planted as younger musicians rediscovered formative death metal—Death, Morbid Angel, Obituary, Autopsy, Incantation, Entombed, Dismember—and their demo cultures. Disenchantment with hyper‑clinical production and extreme sub‑genre fragmentation spurred a counter‑current: write riffs first, embrace dirt and room sound, and restore atmosphere.
By the mid‑2010s, a critical mass of bands and niche labels cohered across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Imprints like 20 Buck Spin, Dark Descent, Me Saco Un Ojo, Maggot Stomp, and others championed dense, riff‑forward records with art that echoed xeroxed flyers and tape‑era layouts. Scenes in Denver, the Bay Area, the Midwest, Scandinavia, and Greece cross‑pollinated at festivals and via split releases.
Hallmarks included down‑tuned guitars (often to B or lower), HM‑2 or saturated tube tones, guttural vocals recorded with natural reverb, audible bass grind, and drum takes that breathe. Songs threaded d‑beat, doom crawls, bolt‑throwing marches, and brief blasts, prioritizing momentum over surgical quantization. Themes emphasized cosmic dread, decay, occult death rites, and war.
Into the 2020s, the movement diversified: cavernous, reverb‑soaked strains; Autopsy‑esque gore‑doom; HM‑2 worship; Incantation‑tinged subterranean cruelties; and more technical but still old‑schooled variants. Despite stylistic branches, the through‑line remains: organic heaviness, riff primacy, and a lived‑in, analog‑leaning production ethos.
