The Berzerker

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "The Berzerker" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Berzerker are an Australian/British industrial death metal band from Melbourne formed in 1995. The band's music, heavily influenced by older death metal and grindcore bands such as Carcass, Obituary, and Napalm Death, can be characterised as a fusion of these with speedcore, and gabber.^[1] The band's founding member Luke Kenny described the band's style as industrial death metal.^[2]

The Berzerker has produced five full-length albums, The Berzerker (2000), Dissimulate (2002), World of Lies (2005), Animosity (2007) and The Reawakening (2008). These were released through Earache Records, with the exception of the last album, which was self-released through Berserker Industries. During the early part of their career as a live act, band members were identified only as The Vocalist, The Guitarist, The Bassist and The Drummer, distinguishable on stage only by the masks they wore. However, the group eventually abandoned this device, after the masks became unhygienic with age, and to avoid unfavorable comparisons with Slipknot.^[2]

A DVD documentary, The Principles and Practices of The Berzerker (2004), includes several hours of live concert footage, as well as the first public images of the band members without their masks.

Most of the band's music videos have been banned from broadcast for reasons such as the possible epileptic seizure-inducing imagery contained in the video "Forever", and the horrific imagery of "Reality".^[3] The latter features graphic images of cadavers and body parts.