Death metal is characterized by highly technical guitar playing, harsh vocals, fast drumming, and lyrics that often explore death, violence, or horror. The style developed from thrash metal and early extreme metal during the 1980s.
Typical death metal features include heavily distorted guitars, palm-muted riffs, blast beats, growled or screamed vocals, and frequent changes in rhythm. The music can range from very fast and aggressive to slow, crushing passages.
The term is sometimes confused with deathcore, which combines death metal with metalcore, or black metal, which usually emphasizes tremolo-picked guitars, shrieked vocals, and an atmospheric aesthetic. Death metal itself contains many subgenres, including melodic, technical, brutal, and progressive death metal.