Like the Netherlands-born Van Halen brothers, guitarist Waclaw “Vogg” Kieltyka and his drummer brother Witold “Vitek” Kieltyka shared metal and DNA, the former 15 and the latter 11 or 12 years old in 1996 when Decapitated tried technical death metal in Krosno, Poland. In a bonus DVD for 2000 debut Winds of Creation, shot in the UK four years later, Vogg and bassist Marcin “Martin” Rygiel churn blond hair windmills while hammering out lightning-fast musical matrices, the inversion of jazz in many ways, genre extremes of opposite directions requiring unquestioned ability. Vitek, then barely 20, sits straight up with a look of calm concentration and mild consternation at times, his rail-thin torso and bony arms a concentration of movement. His animation’s minimal, but the machine-gun fusillade of kick drum isn’t. When Decapitated’s tour bus collided with a truck hauling wood in Belarus in 2007, both he and the band’s singer, Adrian “Covan” Kowanek, sustained serious injuries. Scheduled to return to Kraków, he died in a Russian hospital at 23. Vogg, six-string gravedigger on 2009’s Necropolis for perennial Poles Vader, staged Decapitated’s stunning comeback on July’s Carnival Is Forever.

STUDIO DISCOGRAPHY

Carnival Is Forever (2011) ***.5

Organic Hallucinosis (2006) ****

The Negation (2004) ***

Nihility (2002) **

Winds of Creation (2000) ****

This article appears in November 25 • 2011.

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San Francisco native Raoul Hernandez crossed the border into Texas on July 2, 1992, and began writing about music for the Chronicle that fall, debuting with an album review of Keith Richards’ Main Offender. By virtue of local show previews – first “Recommendeds,” now calendar picks – his writing’s appeared in almost every issue since 1993.