It's hard to tell what to call this genre, because at the time it was clear it wasn't speed metal, but death metal and black metal were not yet recognized, and many of the bands got lumped in with thrash for their punkish insistence on minimal musicality and ear-offensive noise. Nevertheless, this genre produced the prototypical forms for death metal and black metal, and laid down the basic thematic work which would produce both subgenres. Early bands used hardcore tempos with metal tonal structures, setting a mood that was both aggressive and dark; many borrowed influences from late 1970s occult heavy metal and fused it with the almost technological obsessesion with eschatology that defined apocalyptic crustcore like Discharge. The result was music with fast strumming that, in a break from hardcore, took its place among slower chord changes and metal riffs, producing a cavernous brooding drone that seemed to obliterate reality itself with its solidity of sound. Interestingly, this genre first had its genesis in Europe, then went to the New World where increasing speed and longer song structures made it more like what would eventually become both death metal and black metal.

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