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Extreme metal is really a strange, interesting, confusing and complicated form of music not only from a musical standpoint, but also from a social standpoint. How people react is interesting and varies depending on who you're talking to. New initiates to heavy metal think that black metal, grindcore, and death metal all sound the same and will probably just lump everything under the tag of death metal. To someone who has listened to extreme metal extensively, however, these genres often couldn't be much different. One of the best ways to illustrate differences in the genres of death metal and black metal is to have them listen to Soulside Journey by Darkthrone as well as their follow-up album, Blaze in the Northern Sky. It's night and day. See, Darkthrone started out as a death metal band, and their debut, the aforementioned Soulside Journey, was a technical and cleanly produced death metal album reminiscent of Sweden's Entombed. However, the band quickly tired of this approach, and countered with something much more raw and primal(Blaze in the Northern Sky). It was no longer about how many riffs they could fit into a song, but rather the raw emotion behind it. These are directly contrasting approaches. Black metallers and death metallers often hated each as well. Another thing of importance to note here is that the second wave of black metal that started with Darkthrone was often fatally violent. In fact, Dissection's frontman, Jon Nodtveidt, murdered a gay man for making passes at him, and after getting out of jail for this crime, Nodtveidt committed suicide with motives having something to do with Satanism, which he practiced. So, with stuff like this going in the European black metal scene, how is it that something like blackened death metal exists? Social circumstances notwithstanding, the musical beginnings arguably start here, with Nodtveidt and co. crafting the perfect start of a new sub-genre. Dissection took the Satanic lyrics, grim, frostbitten aesthetic and raspy vocals of black metal and threw them in the pot before going back stealing ideas from death metal and throwing them into the mix as well. These things include the cleaner, more polished production aesthetics more prevalent in death metal, more speedy, technical instrumentation, and occasionally growled vocals. They even borrowed the twin guitar harmonies from the Gothenburg melodic death metal scene(something that scene itself co-opted from Iron Maiden, but it was something they made their own). Extreme purists may hate the blend, but any metalhead with an open mind is likely to love it. The album is structured with an intro and an outro bookending six miniature blackened death metal epics. These six songs range in length from 4:51 and 8:06 and all damn near perfect blends of brutality and melody(and black and death). Songs like Night's Blood, Unhallowed, Where Dead Angels Lie, and Soulreaper are iconic in the extreme metal lexicon. Essential listening.