Sweden

As foretold by their album titles, Speed Metal Satan (1997, an EP), Speed Metal Slaughter (1998), and Speed Metal Sentence (1999), Sweden's Cranium specialized in, er, speed metal -- of the sort made popular during the 1980s by bands like Sodom, Destruction, and Hellhammer, to be exact. Obviously, vocalist/guitarist Fredrik Söderberg, guitarist Gustaf Von Segebaden, bassist Philip Von Segebaden, and drummer Johan Hallberg (replacing Joakim Pettersson after the debut EP album) didn't take themselves all that seriously, which is really just as well in a far too serious heavy metal landscape. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia