There's a strong argument for melodeath being the single most influential strain of heavy metal to have emerged in the last thirty years. Without that scintillating mixture of razor-sharp death metal riffs and catchy-as-crabs melodies, we'd have no Killswitch Engage, no Trivium, no Bullet For My Valentine, no Parkway Drive, no Bring Me The Horizon, no...well, you get the picture.
With the genre's influence on modern metal as powerful as ever, here's a handy guide to melodic death metal's evolution across the last three decades, via the albums that have helped move the genre forwards the most.
