The Music Cities™

The Tampa Death Metal Family Tree

A network and lineage map of the bands, musicians, studios, labels, festivals and venues through which death metal began in Tampa Bay and spread across the world, 1979 to 2026, with every Morrisound Recording credit verified album by album.

Work in progress. This map is not exhaustive. It presents the result of documented research at this release and changes as sources are added, corrected, or superseded. Every node is based on at least one public source and carries its sources and confidence class. If something is missing or wrong, submit it.

Public disclosure policy: This map uses public business records, public corporate filings, property records, public calendars, public civic documents, public press coverage and public listings. It maps commercial infrastructure and documented civic activity, not endorsements, partnerships or private cultural behavior. Inclusion does not require participation, consent or approval. The map corrects factual errors promptly and considers removal requests case by case where a listing is outdated, an entity has closed, publication presents a material safety concern, or the entity is not conducting public facing commercial activity. Public commercial infrastructure is mappable; private cultural behavior is protected.

Morrisound was the place. Scott Burns was the transmission system. Death was the personnel engine. Labels made it global.

Open the interactive map Read the reference

371 bands, people and institutions · 1130 connections · 12 lineages · 16 hubs
Version 1.4.2. Data current through 5 September 2026. Activity after that date is described as announced or scheduled, never as completed.

Network view. Three more: Lineage timeline, Cities on a world map and 3D, plus a Play animation from 1979 to 2026 that shows the spread itself.

Read the reference

The same text as the PDF, generated from the same data file as the map, so the counts never disagree.

Reading the mapA scene is a place before it is a genreWhat the nodes and lines mean, the inclusion rules, the timeline placement rule, the people rule and the twelve lineages.Lineage, era by eraFrom Sirens to Initium MortisThe place, the room, the spread, the genres and the export by record: the scene era by era, 1979 to 2026.The studioMorrisound Recording: the room that made the placeConvergence infrastructure, every credit verified album by album, Scott Burns as the transmission system and how the system worked.The personnel engineDeath: the personnel engineWhy Death is the highest betweenness node on the map, the Death tree by edge class and every personnel migration.Current casesSeven mechanismsSeven mechanisms by which a scene becomes a genre, and what Tampa shows.CitiesWhere the scene comes from and where it wentBands by hub, the three kinds of spread and the world map of the scene.InstitutionsWho decides who gets heardThe labels, studios, venues and networks that decide who gets heard, and the dated spread milestones.Network metricsWho carries the connectionsDegree and betweenness on the full graph and the people and production graph, where the computed ranking differs from the brief, and status as of the cutoff.MethodConfidence and sourcesConfidence grades, the evidence standard, terminology, open items and the source register.AppendixIndex of nodesEvery band, person and institution on the map, grouped by lineage and ordered by year.

Current cases: how a scene becomes a genre

Seven cases singled out because each shows a different mechanism by which a scene becomes a genre. They are institutions and mechanisms, not favorite bands; node size and centrality are computed, not adjusted.

Studios, labels, festivals, media, venues · Temple Terrace 1985 to 2014; Sulphur Springs, Tampa from 2018Morrisound Recordingthe room that made the place.Tampa Bay origin · TampaScott Burnsthe transmission system.Florida beyond the origin and relocations · Buffalo; Tampa from 1994Cannibal Corpseinbound relocation.Tampa Bay origin · Altamonte SpringsDeaththe personnel engine.Brazil, Canada and the rest of the world · Belo HorizonteSepulturathe fly in client.Studios, labels, festivals, media, venues · Gothenburg; Hyssna 2005 to 2008Studio Fredmanthe place that answered Tampa.Current generation and revival · Fort Lauderdale and CaliforniaGruesomeexport by record.

Twelve lineages

Every band belongs to one lineage, the one that best describes the network it sits in. Open any lineage in the index of nodes.

Precursors and influences13 nodes Tampa Bay origin56 nodes Florida beyond the origin and relocations42 nodes New York and the East Coast23 nodes Rest of the United States19 nodes Sweden: Stockholm and Gothenburg42 nodes Britain22 nodes Mainland Europe26 nodes Brazil, Canada and the rest of the world13 nodes Genres death metal spawned27 nodes Current generation and revival27 nodes Studios, labels, festivals, media, venues61 nodes

Most connected in this dataset

Betweenness on the full graph: the nodes that bridge otherwise separate parts of the map. Full table and method.

Deathband · betweenness 0.178
Nuclear Blastlabel · betweenness 0.151
Morrisound Recordingstudio · betweenness 0.150
Morbid Angelband · betweenness 0.146
Obituaryband · betweenness 0.098
Napalm Deathband · betweenness 0.081
Century Media Recordslabel · betweenness 0.067
Cannibal Corpseband · betweenness 0.064
Deicideband · betweenness 0.063
Relapse Recordslabel · betweenness 0.046

Data and downloads

Everything on this site comes from one data file. Get the PDF reference, the Excel dataset and data.json, with the rules, the evidence standard and how to cite, on the data page. Corrections and additions go through the Corrections page.