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Scandinavian death metal concerns the death metal bands of Scandinavian origin. The most dominant countries of the genre are Norway, Sweden and Finland. Denmark is less prominent, providing only a few influential death metal bands. Many bands that fall under this category are associated with the melodic death metal movement, thus giving Scandinavian death metal a very different sound from other variations of death metal. However, Scandinavia (particularly Norway) is more notorious for its quantity of black metal as opposed to "true" death metal, though Gothenburg in Sweden has a very large melodic death metal scene, leading melodic death metal to be named Gothenburg metal by many.

In the early 1990s, a distinctively new death metal scene arose, centered primarily around Gothenburg and Stockholm, Sweden, though also incorporating Finnish and Norwegian bands. The Swedish and Finnish bands, inspired mainly by 1980s thrash metal and speed metal bands, were more popular than the Norwegian bands, who were influenced strongly by black metal and included keyboards and chaotic riffs. The first wave of "Swedish death metal" consisted primarily of the bands Carnage and Nihilist, who fragmented later into Entombed, Dismember and Unleashed. These bands used a trademark "Sunlight Studios" guitar sound formed by the use of the Boss HM2 Heavy Metal distortion pedal with scooped mids and enhanced lows and highs to create a mechanical, electric buzz. Using tremolo picking and faster riffs than most death metal, they represented the greatest success of the genre outside America. Later, the Gothenburg sound was pioneered by bands such as At the Gates, Dark Tranquillity, and In Flames. As the 1990s progressed, the Norwegian and Swedish scenes continued diverging, with the latter's center moving from Stockholm to Gothenburg, where New Wave of British Heavy Metal influences became prominent, and Finnish acts continued this trend into the next millennium as Finnish rock began to break into mainstream European audiences. As the 20th century was nearing its end, Finnish death metal bands such as Sentenced popularized the concept of Scandinavian melodic death metal in the European metal scene for the first time.

Denmark is less significant in this aspect. While death metal and other extreme metal genres constituted an influential part of the underground scene of the early 1990s - and many Danish death metal bands released CDs on Die Hard Records, then known as Progress Records - it never reached the same level of popularity as in other Scandinavian countries. This caused Danish metal to stagnate and eventually fall out of favor in the Danish underground scene. In the late 90s, most of the influential Danish death metal bands had been disbanded. One of the few successful Danish death metal bands to still survive are Illdisposed and Iniquity.

Main article: List of Scandinavian death metal bands

• Melodic death metal

• Nords