Technical death metal (sometimes called tech-death or misstated as progressive death metal) is a musical subgenre of death metal that focuses on complex rhythms, riffs and song structures.Technical experimentation in death metal began in the late '80s and early '90s by bands such as Nocturnus, Suffocation and Cryptopsy.
In 1991, New York's brutal death metal-influenced Suffocation released the Effigy of the Forgotten debut album, which focused on speed and brutality with "sophisticated" sense of songwriting and subsequently became groundbreaking in the genre. In the years that followed, artists such as Gorguts, Cryptopsy, Spawn Of Possession, Necrophagist and Obscura emerged as highly influential acts of the genre.