Cock-smashing brutality: The best death metal song intros

When I'm not thinking of ways to meet Lauren Conrad or the girls from 90210, I enjoy studying the intricacies of death metal songwriting. The best songs aren't just a bunch of mindless double bass and monotonous blast beats, they're finely crafted opuses that are painstakingly assembled riff by slamming riff, like a brutal ship-in-a-bottle. Perhaps the most important part of such a masterpiece is the intro, and with that in mind, I present several of our favorites...



Cannibal Corpse - Hammer Smashed Face
When we're talking about the best death metal intros of all time, you would be out of your hammer-smashed skull not to put this song at the top of the list. Cannibal Corpse is, without a doubt, one of the most generic, dullest death metal bands, yet this song is the perfect marriage of catchy hooks and cock-smashing brutality! I'll be honest, it's been a long time since I paid much attention to them, but what fucking happened?! Chris Barnes is writing song after ass-rapingly awful song about pot, wearing Jncos and Star Trek shirts, and Corpsegrinder would rather be playing WoW... I mean, I understand that as people get older they lose touch with the trends, and that's fine... but christ, these guys take irrelevant fossils to a whole new level. If there is a god, Chris Barnes will get hit by a meteor and spare the worl of another Six Feet Under performance.



Suffocation - Human Waste
As soon as the song starts, you hear the Hellraiser sample, and you're all "Oh shit, son, this is spooky as fuck... What's coming next?!" The hair on your arms stands up, because you know the song is going to be some super brutal brutality, and it doesn't disappoint!! The intro riff on this song is without a doubt the sickest thing ever recorded at the time, considering that this song is from their 1990 demo (I didn't hear it until 92 or whatever, though, on "Corporate Death"). The rest of the song is pretty slammin' too, but the first minute or so is really what will knock your dick in the dirt with pit riffment. Every time I hear this song, I put on a Trump Plaza shirt and some sweat pants and jump around my room pretending I'm Frank Mullen.



Obituary - The End Complete
Before wigger slam existed, I listened to Obituary when I needed a dose of groove in my death metal. Obituary are a great band because they always emphasized good songwriting over speed or brutality for their own sake, and this is a great example. Aside from having an awesome intro, it also has a super sweet outro- it starts AND finishes strong, like good porn. I am pretty sure I've posted about this video before, but the best part is Alan West's Rollins Band and Red Hot Chili Peppers shirts. There's nothing funnier than when fans are disappointed by how un-brutal a band is, like when you see Glen Benton taking out the trash or whatever. But that sort of thing is Lucho Metales' speciality, so I'll leave it to him to go into more detail.



Devourment - Babykiller
If there is such a thing as a flagship single for wigger slam, it is definitely this song- especially the original version on 1.3.8. The sorely-missed Wayne Knupp's incredible vocal performance started a whole generation of cricket vocals, and it all started with the cock-smashingly brutal intro to this awesome song. It's nearly 5 minutes long, but I can listen to it the whole way through anytime it comes on my iPod. This song showed the death metal world that traditional musical concepts like melody, dynamics, structure, and lyrics were outdated assumptions, that the only thing that really matters is pit riffment. If you think about it, it was very avant garde and postmodern! Hopefully some grad school egghead will write a paper about this song called something like "Operationalizing pit riffment: Contradictions and paradoxes in Texas slam metal."

More marriages of awesome hooks and cock-smashing brutality?
As always, please tell us what we missed. There aren't a ton of great death metal intros on the level of these, but surely the list is longer that this post.