Death metal fans....favorite Death album

Are we allowed to base our votes solely on sleeve design? If so, then I vote for this:

http://shop.obscure-abhorrence.com/cover/1963deathleprosy120080117.jpg

As a horror-movie obsessed 12-year-old, I thought this was just about the coolest thing in the world. In fact, in constitutes one of those rare instances where I was actually kind of scared to buy the actual record b/c it just looked that evil.

It's a solid album too. I had not heard much about it from fans since it often got overlooked compared to their other releases, but I couldn't quit playing it when I finally picked it up last year. Just flat out rocks.

For the record, I picked Symbolic (which I'm listening to now), but that could change any day of the week.

Weird timing, I've been listening to Death all week - checking out some instrumental Scream Bloody Gore demos, waiting for this to come in the mail, listening to Sound of Perseverance with relish. I think Human may have been the first proper death metal album I bought, and it kinda fucked with my mind - clerks in the record store were playing it and everybody was standing around going "what the fuck" and I was like "ok sell me this please." Haven't heard it in years though. I had it on a fuckin cassette. Symoblic's got "Crystal Mountain" (but so does that live at the Troub one, which I think of every time I go there)...for me it's hard to choose, because the early stuff is so vital, but the proggy stuff is so good. I know a lot of people don't dig Death both because Chuck went Xian & because the progginess of the whole project ended up running counter to what death metal sorta turned out be about but fuck that, I love tech-death.

I am gonna wait to vote on this one, since I'm just entering a listen-to-Death phase and we've got a week, I'm sure everybody is very excited to hear me thinking out loud on this shit :/

Individual Thought Patterns was the first Death album I heard as a teenager, and I got pretty deep into it.

I always found it extraordinary that they were from Florida, as their music evokes mist-shrouded, mountainous, Northern European landscapes perfectly.

Voted Symbolic, but every album after Spiritual is great. I was never into the old stuff, for me it got interesting once Chuck started getting really good players, like Sean Reinert en Paul Masvidal (both of Cynic) on Human, and Gene Hoglan on the next two records.

I really only like Scream Bloody Gore and Leprosy, but I love both of those. I can't stand Individual Thought Patterns, Spiritual Healing of Sounds Of Perseverance, too much prog I guess. I like some of Human & Symbolic though.

I guess I'm not really a troo death metal fan, though.

Coincidentally I was listening to an Early Demos bootleg yesterday/this morning - sound quality was awful, anyone know if the demos that are on the Zero Tolerance CD are listenable?

they're pretty awful, as i recall, the old ones anyway. listenable enough to me.

i can't decide whether to vote SBG or leprosy. i've got nothing against the later ones, those are just my favorites.

It's a tie for me between Human and Individual Thought Patterns. I like Symbolic, too, but those first two prog-tech-Death records are just so fucking great. I think I will listen to both of them today and then make a decision.

Symbolic just keeps pulling away...man, that riff that closes the album. Just...shivers!

I really like Human but it seems like I'm NEVER in the mood for it. Individual Thought Patterns is classic too.

Human is "better" but I cast what will probably be the only vote for Spiritual Healing because it's my favorite - "Living Monstrosity!" First pro-life death metal song?

ITP for me, what I like best about it is the drawn out, meandering, jam session-like feel of it. Unlike all the other albums which were always more compact, structured. SBG would be #2 as it was the first of them I heard, young me could hardly believe metal could be any more brutal. Fuck I loved this band, although Symbolic was the first realisation that they would not get better each album anymore.

Either Sound of Perseverance or Symbolic...

playing Scream Bloody Gore right now....

When I was in 9th grade, I was walking the halls between classes. I noticed there was a wide open locker with nothing in it except the cassette of Scream Bloody Gore.

I took it home and listened to "Regurgitated Guts" and "Zombie Ritual" over and over.

That album was meant to come into my life that day, and it has never left (though I seem to listen to it exclusively on vinyl now).

What a completely awesome story!!!

I'm gonna be voting ITP.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

hey dude who voted for the demos: explain yourself

I only have Sound of Perseverance, have yet to be able to get very far into it. Something about his vocals bother me. Of course, it's possible that once I'm able to get through the whole album, my view on that will change.

very surprised Human didn't do better, but I'm down with the ITP pick

Been rediscovering ITP lately - great stuff, some dazzling playing. They sure do pack the time signature shifts in.

Leprosy. I prefer the mid-to-late 80's transition period from Thrash to Death Metal more than proper Death Metal itself, generally.

Just listening to Symbolic for the first time in maybe a decade. Fucking epic.

Symbolic is an album I'm feeling again right now. too soon, Chuck...too soon. you are still missed.

leprosy until the end

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRDtb9AM2r4rPFTuIOdhUBV430RoESGI8eTY7v89eoz8vtFXfc&t=1&usg=__mgjraxIbkDSKMViUrcSZunWsMfY=

Leprosy is fantastic. some h8 on it cuz it's sandwiched between their thrash/death era and their tech death era, but the songs just flat out rock.

How could anyone with ears hate on Leprosy?

Metalheads can be tards

I fucking LOVE this:

When I was in 9th grade, I was walking the halls between classes. I noticed there was a wide open locker with nothing in it except the cassette of Scream Bloody Gore.

I took it home and listened to "Regurgitated Guts" and "Zombie Ritual" over and over.

That album was meant to come into my life that day, and it has never left (though I seem to listen to it exclusively on vinyl now).

I love Human and don't know the others very well at all yet...

oh man...you are in for treats, let me tell you. not all of them are immediate, but once you absorb them, they're amazing.

My fave fluctuates between Symbolic and ITP. I like em proggy, but not too proggy.

Symbolic is mine now. occasionally has moments that are....pretty!

god Leprosy is so fucking great. Chuck's voice was really one of a kind. I loved his vox even in the later days but he just outright didn't care about shredding his throat on the early stuff.

you can totally hear the Rozz influence on this album too. I mean I love SBG and all but it's small potatoes compared to Leprosy.

Human 1
Spiritual Healing 1

what in the goddamn hell

It's likely that I voted for Spiritual Healing. It was my intro to Death (and death metal) and will always have a special place in my heart.

put on Symbolic for the first time in a while. god this shit is just like perfect. great balance of melodicism, rawkin', and meedly-meedly leads.

When I was in 9th grade, I was walking the halls between classes. I noticed there was a wide open locker with nothing in it except the cassette of Scream Bloody Gore.

I took it home and listened to "Regurgitated Guts" and "Zombie Ritual" over and over.

I keep thinking of this forlorn guy who spent years trying to get his tape back

I feel like at their peak (IMO, between Human - Symbolic), they might just have been the best progressive death band alive.

listening to Symbolic again now and still gives me chills....

also insane to me this is the 15th anniversary of his death in a few weeks. :(

I feel like at their peak (IMO, between Human - Symbolic), they might just have been the best progressive death band alive.

I think Individual Thought Patterns might have been like.....the fourth death metal album I bought? I think after Six Feet Under's horrible Warpath, Cannibal Corpse's Gallery of Suicide, and Carcass's Heartwork. was enamored with the fluidity of the leads, as well as Chuck's vocals, and yet it still wasn't afraid to be heavy, which is my #1 problem with a lot of tech/progressive death.

I loved that Death to All tour a few years ago as well.

Symbolic I didn't acquire until 2007 but it was practically the soundtrack to my summer that year.

yeah what a legacy. all the albums still sound good. always reward a revisit. an all-time band.

i love this band more than almost any other band

i'd include sound of perserverance in the peak. it was the third metal record i ever bought (after leviathan and in the nightside eclipse) and it still surprises me

it's a great album. jsut doesn't quite hit the same peaks for me, but it holds up nicely.

I don't like the production on Perserverance. Not enough oomph, vocals too high in the mix.

I can never find this damn thread, lol

I love that on Individual Thought Patterns, as catchy and techy as the album is, there are some pummeling Leprosy-esque riffs lurking around the corner periodically.

Chuck never really lost that Death were a metal band, even when he get all proggy.

On the opposite end of the spectrum of Death, I am listening to Scream Bloody Gore and it is still faaaaantastic.

fuck yessssssss

I listened to Symbolic while jogging a few times in the last few months. lol @ me but also it ruled.

When I was in 9th grade, I was walking the halls between classes. I noticed there was a wide open locker with nothing in it except the cassette of Scream Bloody Gore.

I took it home and listened to "Regurgitated Guts" and "Zombie Ritual" over and over.

That album was meant to come into my life that day, and it has never left (though I seem to listen to it exclusively on vinyl now).

― Nate Carson, Sunday, July 27, 2008 5:56 PM (ten years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is like a scene in a rpg, i love it

would prob be between human and symbolic for me now

couldn't choose between them though. every riff on human is the best riff i've ever heard, especially if it's a riff in the song "secret face"

all those relapse remasters of the catalog sound phenomenal

Just happened to see the Death By Metal documentary on amazon prime, pretty good, pretty much what you'd expect, amazing how much confidence Chuck's mother had in him from the beginning.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting things but it seemed like there was a possibility that he was going to do clean vocals later on but he seemed to be fed up with singing and maybe his vocals would have become a rarity if he had lived.
Looks like he blew some things out of proportion, like being sold as a death metal band when he was feeling restricted by those expectations.

Then bookmarked a bunch of documentaries I'd never heard of (Pentagram, L7, female metal vocalists doc, Barclay James Harvest)

Enjoyed the documentary. Also, I've spent three decades mispronouncing Chuck Schuldiner's last name. Anyone else?

I spent most of the running time listening for a mention of his surname but didn't hear one! I've always pronounced it Shooldinner (Schooldinners lol) - is that wrong?

I thought the documentary was fine if kinda plodding. I was wondering why I'd not seen Death back in the day as I saw most of the big hitters at the time. So now I know. Were his mental health issues that well known at the time?

If I'd wanted anything from the documentary, I'd have liked a bit more focus on the music. A little musicology goes a long way but something a bit more on how he constructed the music, how he transitioned from the bludgeon of the early records to the more technical stuff, how they managed that in the studio etc etc.

Yeah, I would have enjoyed hearing some more about that too, but as music documentaries go, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. It doesn't insult the intelligence of the average death metal fan. Paul Masvidal conspicuously absent from the interviews. I assumed there was some beef, but Paul did those tribute shows, so who knows.

His name was pronounced in the doc when someone--I think it was Steve Digiorgio--refers to Chuck's mom as "Mrs. Schuldiner." I've always said "SHULL-dinn-ur" but I guess it's pronounced "shul-DEEN-ur?"

It does seem he gave plenty of people the right to be permanently pissed off with him. Sean Reinert still seems pretty raw about things. Gene Hoglan seems more sanguine but it's clearly there.

Yep. I was actually impressed by how diplomatic Reinert came off in the interview in light of Chuck's seemingly passive aggressive way of dealing with band personnel. But I'm a Cynic fanboy, so of course I'd think that.

Best thing about the doc is that the filmmakers realized they didn't need to explain the entire history of death metal. Clearly, this film was made for people who were already fans, which I appreciated, despite the fact that it probably limited the appeal of the film somewhat. There's nothing worse, to me, in music documentaries, when they begin with 25 minutes of, say, "bebop is an offshoot of the American art form know as jazz..."

I don't recall if I gave this the one vote for Spiritual Healing or not.

I was assuming it was me, to be honest. That was my first Death album so I've always stood behind it, even though they have other albums that are arguably better.

Sound of Perseverance is such a high note that they went out on. I know some folk don't like it as much. my only qualm with it is Chuck's voice, which was usually this powerful, throaty, death-rattle, seems more like Sebastian Bach shrieks at times.

"Painkiller" vocals are pretty amazing.

yeah it was interesting hearing him attempt clean vocals for the first time.

at the time I got TSOP I had only gotten Painkiller a year earlier so I was mega excited about the cover.

I do find it interesting that (for me at least), the more progressive they got, the easier the individual riffs got to play.

holy fuck, listening to the Painkiller cover for the first time in decades, I forgot how good his falsetto sounded

also cool that they didn't recreate the Priest solos but added their own

Rest in peace Sean Reinert

Cynic - "Nunc Stans"

Hey comrade,
What will it be like,
On the day we face our mortal lives?
We're all given,
The misfortune of loss,
But that's a gift we call impermanence,
We don't own our work,
We don't own the earth,
At all
We're eternal Nunc Stans soldiers,
The eternal warriors.
We're accountants,
In the firm of life,
Entrusted with a body, heart and mind.
Hey comrade,
Did I love well?
Have I learned to live moment to moment?
We don't own our work,
We don't own the earth,
We don't own our minds,
We don't own anything,
At all.
We're eternal Nunc Stans soldiers,
The eternal warriors.
We're eternal Nunc Stans soldiers,
The eternal warriors.
It was not death,
It was not life,
It was love.

RIP

human the greatest album of all time, still devastated by this news

Damn, I loved that Cynic album in high school, really unique & great drummer.

On the opposite end of the spectrum of Death, I am listening to Scream Bloody Gore and it is still faaaaantastic.

― The Man Who Saw The Midwife (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Sunday, August 6, 2017 5:54 AM bookmarkflaglink

playin this on vinyl rn. it's helping with my down mood.

ZOMBIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
RITUAL

few things....

so these all got reissued...again, except Symbolic...again. in 2010, the same thing happened- the explanation given was that Roadrunner wouldn't give permission to Relapse to reissue that one. is there some unknown reason they don't want that one to be re-issued? I mean I know it's been reissued before, but it was not part of the last two major reissues.

also, anybody wanna change their vote? my order goes:

1) Human (this one took years to grow on me, now it's the first one I want to play - bridged the gap between proggy and face-punchy, just great writing all over this thing, all-star lineup)
2) Symbolic (the "thoughtful" Death album. some of the best lyrics Chuck wrote, and the riffs are less about sanding faces off and more good, poignant songwriting. the ideas are simple throughout, probably the simplest on a Death album ever - but are ever so atmospheric and ear catchy.
3) Leprosy (my favorite of their early gonzo balls to the wall shit. It's everything SBG was, ratcheted up by 1000)
4) Individual Thought Patterns (the first one I bought, age 16. loved the fluidity of the guitar leads and the creative, melodic riff-writing, and the production ,which still had bite, with Chuck's zombie-ish vocals. "Overactive Imagination" is an all-time favorite)
5) Sound of Perseverance (I was ambivalent to this one when it came out, though it was the second one I owned. time's been kinder to it. it's proggy af, but it has a lot of what made Human good throughout it as well. "Bite the Pain" is a classic)
6) Scream Bloody Gore (this entire album rips start to finish. i can't imagine what this sounded to metal fans at the time....alas I was an elementary school kid)
7) Spiritual Healing (I only acquired this one about 7 or 8 years ago, and it didn't grab me as much as the others, though it's not "bad" whatsoever.)

I slightly prefer Sound Of Perseverance to Symbolic but I still need to get the rest of them.

Re: the documentary, how do you guys feels about Chuck seemingly wanting to give up singing eventually?

Spiritual Healing was robbed

Roadrunner wouldn't give permission to Relapse to reissue that one. is there some unknown reason they don't want that one to be re-issued?

Roadrunner is a division of Atlantic Records/Warner Music Group. Major labels don't license their titles to indies to be reissued. (That's assuming Atlantic/WMG even gives a shit at all — they're pretty much 100% in the pop and hip-hop business at this point.)

Also, my ranking:

1) Human/Individual Thought Patterns (tie)
2) Symbolic/Sound of Perseverance (tie)
3-7) don't care, honestly

it is unsatisfying ranking death records they're all great

like scream bloody gore would prob be last in my ranking and that feels stupid bc it rocks my face off

Re: the documentary, how do you guys feels about Chuck seemingly wanting to give up singing eventually?

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, August 25, 2020 2:57 PM bookmarkflaglink

I mean, he kinda did with Control Denied. I honestly woulda missed his vocals if he just did the Control Denied thing and never screamed again.

ok I might be back to ITP as my favorite now.

it's an all Death DJ set tonight.

I want to watch you drown in your lies
The end of your masquerade
A matter of time, intertwining lies
Domination, control
Feed his twisted nature

It is sickening to see dreams die
A word of advice
Fate's patience is growing short
Fake down to your mind and appearance
You will fall short of the dreams to destroy

In time you will find
Yourself trapped in a corner
These four words, my friend
I promise you will not forget

I am one of many that see through your lies
Hiding will do you no good, many seek revenge
Soon to become a victim of what
You live to create and cannot have

It is sickening to see dreams die
A word of advice
Fate's patience is growing short
Fake down to your mind and appearance
You will fall short of the dreams to destroy

i am just getting into classic death metal in a very big way

this is one of the very greatest bands of all time, right? my god.

sorry for shitpost i just... this band!

one of the very greatest bands of all time yes

Otm

I first heard them at 16 and it was transformative, you could say.

I love that each album is classic in a different way.

yeah just always great, stoked for you getting into them, what a pleasure

so I'm on the lawn outdoors at the Orlando Fringe Festival, listening to this guy play some electric jazz, and my friend tells me it's actually Bobby Koelbe. aka, the lead guitarist on Death's "Symbolic", who is apparently a jazz legend here and I never knew it. he was my old friend's guitar teacher apparently!

Nice

"God Of Thunder" sounds almost ploddingly simple at the end of Human

Because it's a KISS cover?

:)

it’s a great cover tho, imo!

Yeah I knew it was a cover. Other than "Painkiller" how many covers did they do?

Not many! That might be it actually

Di Giorgio really is the star of ITP, isn't he

my god, I'd never heard metal bass playing like that before I picked up this album as a child.

Hoglan REALLY beats the shit out of the drums on this, I mean lol he has some really nice fills too don't get me wrong, but while Sean Reinert's masterful performance was a lot about the texture of his playing and fitting into the groove of the band, Hoglan just goes ham on his kit at times. and it works!

Yeah after I heard ITP I immediately went on a hunt for anything else Hoglan was on but unfortunately there's not really anything else where he goes all-out in the same way.

I think that's hwy I prefer this to Human. Human's a good, solid album, but it's 'clean' and precise, ITP brings back some of the 'extremes' that were eschewed while still pursuing the proggy direction Human went to. it's a better marriage of the two sounds, I think.

I think it's fair to say Hoglan beats the shit out of the drums on those early Dark Angel records? Darkness Descends, man.

If you've ever seen him live, he's fantastic to watch; he unloads these avalanches while sitting perfectly upright and still like a court reporter. It's hilarious.

i saw him with Dethklok I think, lol

I’ve been listening to the second Watchtower album a bit and I can definitely hear their influence in a lot of moments on ITP. Interesting band.

I saw Gene play with Death.
I am old.

pretty incredible Death tribute show(s) going on this weekend, and it's being livestreamed on Sunday for anybody who's interested (I'll actually be there, hoping not to make a cameo in the video):

features a lot of ex-members including Terry Butler, Bobby Koelbe, Shannon Hamm, Kelly Conlon, Steve Digiorgio, James Murphy....Hamm's not listed in the lineup for the Symbolic band but he was a late add after the article was written.

https://www.blabbermouth.net/news/chuck-schuldiner-tribute-concert-to-be-livestreamed-next-weekend/

(sadly, livestream NOT free)

realized on relistening to Scream Bloody Gore that really the intensity is most of what is going for it here, because on the few times it kind of lets up a bit towards the middle ("Sacrificial" through "Regurgitated Guts"), it's still 'good, but not really at the level it sets the first three tracks out of the gate. then it incrementally picks back up over the last four tracks which re-elevate it to classic status

whereas Leprosy, the intensity is still there, but there's much better writing and dynamics and it doesn't have to rely purely on savagery.

sounds obvious but I didn't remember the leap forward in composition being as wide as it was when I listened to both last night. I don't think the difference in ALBUM QUALITY is necessarly as far apart because SBG covers its weakness in the raw, uncompromising aesthetic (and has two of my favorite Death songs of all time), but the magnitude of the leap forward on Leprosy is underappreciated.

also forgot how Leprosy and Spiritual Healing were truly the only collaborative songwriting albums in the catalog, like Rozz co-wrote most everything on Leprosy (even had a solo credit on one song), and Murphy/Butler had co-writer credits on a majority of tracks on Spiritual Healing, then Chuck went back to writing it all himself so he could rotate musicians in and out.

Symbolic might be retaking my spot as my favorite. it has this mystical, melancholic vibe that speaks to me like it did when I first heard it

Original handwritten lyrics to "Overactive Imagination"

https://i.ibb.co/nb20v6W/IMG-20211212-195422.jpg

And the man's beautiful guitar

https://i.ibb.co/7ysPcGS/IMG-20211212-195356.jpg

Tribute band Left to Die is doing Leprosy front to back in three Florida shows this week. Featuring Rick Rozz and Terry Butler, formerly of Death, and Matt Harvey (Exhumed frontman) and Gus Rios (Malevolent Creation).

I love Scream Bloody Gore but Leprosy is a desert island album

went from being burnt out on Human to it being my favorite again lmao. i love that there's just so much to love here.

anybody else gonna catch the Death to All tour? I cherish any chance to hear this music live with some of hte people who played on it, even without the most important one there.

forever going to regret never seeing them

On Record Store Day, Relapse is re-releasing the compilation Fate — The Best of Death, which includes tracks from each of the first four albums. I reviewed it for The Wire, which led me to listen to the first three in depth for the first time ever and holy fuck, I had been missing out.

how on earth did ITP walk this

that one's one of my favs, was the first one I owned. on cassette, listening to it on the way to my first ever voice lesson lol.

the first two are all time. even Spiritual Healing is better than its reputation indicates.

Leprosy is just about perfect though

they're all great imo. back in the day questions of whether stuff is still cool or w/e, those fade away. all his shit was good.

blows my mind that such an important piece of metal history happened p much in the area I grew up. as Kam Lee said at one of his Massacre shows last year, "Death metal didn't begin in Tampa, it began in Altamonte Springs!" (I'm sure some would protest that statement, but I digress).

a few years ago, I went to a bar, and my ex was there with a friend. I went over to say "Hello", and she told him "tell Neanderthal the story you just told me".

Her friend wasn't a metal guy at all, but he asks me if I knew the band Death. He then talked about how he went to Lake Brantley High (my high school's main rival) in the 80s, and he had a classmate named Chuck. And how he was quiet and soft-spoken, but friendly. He didn't know him real well, but he knew he was really into metal music. They weren't close friends or anything, just acquaintances, and lost touch after high school. He had no idea that Chuck was a musician himself, much less that he was in the process of inventing an entire subgenre of metal.

The friend hadn't thought of Chuck in years until the news spread among fellow alumni that he was sick, and eventually died. But it wasn't until after he passed away that he discovered that he really didn't know who his classmate eventually became. Initially, he was stunned to see the news of his random high school classmate reported on MTV news bulletins, rock and metal zines, and sprawled all over the internet. It was only when he dug further that realized the soft-spoken quiet dude that he had a few classes with was actually the Godfather of Death metal.

“bodies deformed way beyond belief” is an all time album opener lyrics

I love this band so much and would love to go see alumni from any Death era play this stuff but I can’t really hack it that night

ITP is so sick, builds wonderfully off of human. I haven’t spent enough time with the last two albums yet.

It was the second one I owned, but I didn't think all that much of Sound of Perseverance at first, other than the "Painkiller" cover, but after seeing Death to All in 2014 and hearing it live, I revisited it...and it's really good! Other than my issues with the vocals (outside of the "Painkiller" cover), it's pretty fantastic.

I really wish bands even had the time to evolve like this, I feel like the pressure to produce has bands either afraid to pivot at all, or rushing it to where they make the jump to a new sound before they had ample time to explore. nobody wants to put out 'transition' albums anymore unless you're a big established entity.

"big" being a very relative term here, of course

the end of "Perennial Quest" stirred up feelings in me I can't describe tonight. it always does.

Death fans, if you have a chance to catch the Death to All tour, please do. it was an incredible experience.

not exactly thrilled that I decided to share copious amounts of video of my drunken antics last night tho, someone should really take my phone away at these things.