Three Classic Metal Record Companies You Must Check Out

This article is just a quick intro to some great labels for getting into new bands through previous releases. Use it as a tool to find new music genres you may not have heard before.

Here are the labels to check out:

Metal Blade

Metal Blade is a popular metal label that tons of metal fans have checked out, so if you haven’t gone through the bands in their catalogue yet, you’re behind the times. This record company has a wide variety of various metal genres and spans many decades. Here you’ll locate many popular bands such as Amon Amarth, Behemoth, Pentagram, Merciful Fate or even highly commercialized bands like Six Feet Under.

No Fashion

Beginning as an underground label for many black metal acts that would go on to become well-known, No Fashion is a great place to look if you are looking to get into black/death metal or just classic “extreme” acts you haven’t got to yet. Some great bands include Dissection, Dark Funeral, Ablaze My Sorrow and Noctes. You’ll even find Katatonia’s first album from 1993 released by this company. This label is a particularly good place to find some lesser known Swedish melodic black/death metal bands that have been passed over. One of which includes Vinterland, a one release band, who put out a great debut.

Overall, this label is very small in total number of bands/albums released, but is a cool place to find some melodic “extreme” bands with a mid 90’s Swedish sound to many of them.

SteamHammer

SteamHammer is a unique label that has put out tons of great bands from various metal genres. You might of heard of them after they teamed up with Type O Negative in their later material. There are several other popular/awesome bands you should listened to, including: Iron Angel, Freedom Call, Sodom and Prong.

For more record label discussion, band reviews and other miscellaneous music talk, check out my future article releases.