After Nirvana’s Nevermind tore the “alternative rock market” a seven-figure asshole, every major label with easy access to a couple of guitar-wielding longhairs was vying to shove its swollen corporate phallus into the proverbial money-ring of brown fire.

It was October 1991 and Andy Wallace was getting richer by the day. The veteran producer/engineer was reaping the financial rewards of mastering Nirvana’s recently released (and completely unexpected) commercial juggernaut Nevermind.

When New York grinders Brutal Truth released their debut, Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses, bassist extraordinaire Danny Lilker (Anthrax, S.O.D., Exit-13) had just severed his ties with Nuclear Assault.

“Hi Kevin, I’m coming down to your office now. Um… could you please make sure that noise you’re always blasting is off by the time I get there? Thanks!”

Drugs, disease, crime, abuse, poverty, paranoia, drugs, alcohol, alcohol, alcohol: Such are the cornerstones of Eyehategod’s time-honored New Orleans aesthetic.

In 1991 My Dying Bride already stood out from the cookie-cutter, cookie-monster death metal that was hegemonic in the underground at the time.

The sweltering heat and merciless humidity of mid- to late-‘80s Florida proved a fertile breeding ground for a burgeoning genre that would announce itself to the world as death metal.

The words “stoner epic” don’t even come close to describing the extreme riff-hypnosis that Jerusalem visited upon the red-eyed legions of heshers, grass pirates, and acid casualties who genuflected at the altar of the legendary San Jose power-trio known as Sleep.

In 1989, while the extreme metal underground was bingeing on the high-speed savagery of death metal and grindcore, ex-Napalm Death vocalist Lee Dorrian and Carcass roadie Mark “Griff” Griffiths were getting ripped on British cider, brown weed, and the down-tuned Sabbathian histrionics of Trouble, St. Vitus, and Witchfinder General.

In the Norwegian summer of 1993, the second wave of black metal was still in its ultra-violent infancy, and only a handful of bands were actively exploring the parameters of what was then an obscure and distinctly Scandinavian art form.