Sean Piccoli
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. ˜ Brian Woody was by his own account a kid in a foul mood, an uprooted child of divorce living with his mother and sharing a bedroom with his brother. One day in those cramped environs he noticed a cassette tape lying on his brother's bed. He put it on, and out roared the loudest, fastest, most unholy and ferocious music Woody had ever heard. He loved it right away.

"Just listening to it made me feel better," said the 27-year-old Cleveland resident. "It made it easier to cope. It gave me a release for all that anger."

That moment of communion with a Los Angeles band called Slayer would be decisive. Today, Woody is a tour manager for bands in the same vein. Two of his road charges, Kreator and Vader, both played the Culture Room in Fort Lauderdale on a recent Wednesday night. The other three bands on the bill were Nile, Amon Amarth and Goatwhore.

All five identify with a scene that in broad terms is often labeled "extreme metal," a sound pioneered in the 1980s by the likes of Slayer, Venom, Anthrax, Megadeth and Metallica.

But this particular lineup, with its Stygian band names, shuddering rhythms and morbid lyrics, wore the distinctive pall of death ˜ as in "death metal."

It was, in short, an enjoyable night in hell for a small but invested audience. Fans of death metal and its Satanic cousin, black metal, are few in number compared to, say, the MTV-watching nation that applauds the punky pop of Good Charlotte or the brute funk of so-called "nu-metal" bands such as Korn.

Some death-metal fans said they do not get the same rush from mainstream music. "I used to be into the soft stuff, Alanis Morissette, Bush, No Doubt, when I was in, like, fifth grade," said Fabian Ramos, 18, of Boynton Beach, Fla. "I moved on to the harder stuff."

Their preferences run instead to Cannibal Corpse, Entombed, Mercyful Fate, Celtic Frost, Deicide, Dimmu Borgir and Six Feet Under. The band names alone all but guarantee the music a place on the margins, never mind the music's other traits ˜ guttural singing and a coroner-like preoccupation with violence, viscera and vile pestilence.

Since it emerged in the mid-1980s from its extreme cocoon, led by a handful of bands from Florida's Gulf Coast including Death and Obituary, death metal has been chronically out of fashion even as it has spread around the world.

Its gothic doomsaying has no doubt inspired some horror films, video games and comic books. But death metal has attracted something less than pop culture's full and loving embrace. Advertisers do not routinely court its ranks for marketing tie-ins. Clothing designers do not look to its frontmen for inspiration. Death-metal fandom is not a statement of in-crowd cool, and playing in a death metal band is not a ticket to pop-chart prominence or features in Rolling Stone.

"It's still very much underground," said Culture Room owner Greg Aliferis. His venue, which books local and national bands of all kinds, also has become South Florida's most reliable death-metal outpost. Aliferis has lined up another round of torment on tap with Hate Eternal, Krisiun and Cattle Decapitation. He was confident that the partisans will turn out.

"Whether you like the music or not, they are true, devoted fans," he said. "They're not here because everybody else is."

Janice Arink, 23, said it was "definitely the brutality" of the music that attracts her. "It's very emotional," she added. "It kind of resembles classical (music) in that way."

Heavy metal dating to Black Sabbath and Judas Priest has borrowed from classical and baroque music; death metal is no exception. Its guitar and bass players saw away at major and minor third intervals like chamber groups gone mad.

Arink's friend and co-worker in the restaurant trade, Dave Leder, 28, suggested a more pragmatic source of appeal: "It's the perfect outlet for when you're Σ frustrated."

Concertgoers got equal parts catharsis, creepiness and profane pomp. Goatwhore, from New Orleans, offered up pieces of a new album, "Funeral Dirge for the Rotting Sun." Amon Amarth, from Sweden, indulged one of metal's oldest rituals: The hair propeller. The bassist and one guitarist bowed their heads and ˜ still playing ˜ began a motion that sent their long manes into a synchronized whirl. Two fans clambered up on to the monitor amps to greet them, and soon there were four heads of hair locked in a violent spin cycle.

Vader, from Poland, brandishing guitars resembling pointy medieval weapons, closed with a cover of an extreme-metal touchstone: Slayer's Raining Blood. Vocalist-guitarist Piotr Wiwczarek, 38, looked like the wide-mouthed figure in Munch's "The Scream" as he let out a long, low bellow ˜ death metal's signature sound.

Kreator, from Germany, stoked the mosh pit where fans caromed off one another. Guitarist-vocalist Mille Petrozza, 35, introduced the title track to the band's 1985 album, "Endless Pain," by saying, "We're going back, far back to the time when people used to kill each other at these shows. Do you remember that time? Let's see if you do."

There was no killing, just a lot of frenetic movement. Wearied moshers repaired to the bar for a beer or a bottle of water. By the time the headliner, Greenville, S.C., band Nile, took its turn, the mosh had turned to mush. A few participants robotically swung tired-out arms and staggered sideways into their buddies before leaving to go home.

In a chat before his turn onstage, Vader's Wiwczarek said what he likes about the music is that it commands a person's full attention.

"You don't just listen to the music, you feel it," he said, adding, "Pop music is more background."

He said his chosen genre has not been a path to riches. "It's like a dream came true when Vader became our jobs but that doesn't mean it's easier."

Constant touring is required to keep albums selling and interest piqued. Vader has been at it since before the Iron Curtain fell and freed Wiwczarek ˜ first, to play Poland without censure from metal-phobic Communist authorities, and then to travel to other countries.

Kreator's Pedrozza said his band finds a following virtually everywhere it goes: Kreator shot its concert DVD in South Korea and South America, and has upcoming tour stops scheduled in Costa Rica, Israel and Russia. "I bet you could go to Bujumbura, Burundi and find some death metal fans there," he said.

But one fan of note said that these are far from the best of times for extreme metal and its offshoots. "There's definitely a handful of bands that are trying to make a logical difference," said Phil Anselmo, a frontman for two bands with extreme pedigree, Pantera and Superjoint Ritual. "Then I just really feel there's a lot of bands that sound way too much like their predecessors."