1983 MORBID Visions

For metal, 1983 was the year shit really got dark. Thrash was born, Metallica and Slayer debuts setting new standards of intensity that a slew of ravening hopefuls instantly sought to outdo. In San Francisco’s Bay Area, the crucible of thrash, a gang of pimply teens named Possessed were tinkering around with the term ‘Death Metal’ as a good name for a demo. This organic genre moniker – and the intense, oppressive, gore-sodden sound that it describes – slowly caught on in odd pockets of the USA as 1983 progressed: Master emerged in Chicago, and Necrophagia in Ohio, while in sunny Florida a brace of future scene leaders assembled in sweltering jam rooms to destroy all remaining boundaries of taste and velocity.

In Orlando, 16-year-old video nasty enthusiast Chuck Schuldiner formed Mantas (becoming Death a year later), whose muffled rehearsal tapes would have disproportionately transcendent consequences. Over in Tampa, 18-year-old guitar