stormtroopers of death

A trip through SPIN’s 1985 archives reveals plenty of cool underground culture—deathrock, early industrial, Henry Rollins doing stuff. When it came to metal, however, coverage in ‘85 tended toward the glossy, poodle-haired end of the genre, with Mötley Crüe and Christian metallers Stryper getting the most ink. Meanwhile, down in the metal underground, seeds were being sown for something uglier and way less pious. These seeds sprouted into bands from all over the world pushing metal to new extremes and embracing over-the-top depravity, with many of them defining entire subgenres with their stylistic shifts. These five releases show some of the clearest through-lines from 1985 to the extreme metal of 2020. CELTIC FROST: To Mega-Therion CREDIT: Brigitte Engl/Redferns Switzerland’s Hellhammer ...