Death metal fans....favorite Death album

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.