“Once you heard death metal, there was no turning back. Thrash was out of the window. It seemed silly, music for wimps”: The chaotic story of Nihilist, Unleashed, Entombed and the bloody birth of Swedish death metal

Entombed posing for a photograph in 1990.

Death metal as we know it began crawling from the swamps of Florida in the mid-80s, but at the end of the decade a mutant variation emerged on the other side of the Atlantic – specifically in Sweden, thanks to bands such as Nihilist, Unleashed, Grave and Entombed. In 2008, members of the Swedish scene looked back on the beginnings of a movement that would twist metal into gnarly new shapes.