HUMAN

When Chuck Schulinder first founded Mantas, which later changed its name to Death, death metal was still in its infancy. The band started out with typical death metal themes, especially what people often refer to as "gore lyrics". By the band's third release, the lyrical themes started to become more serious and intelligent, and the music continued to grow more and more technical and complex. By the time Human was released in 1991, Death was already starting to become a well-known name in the metal community, especially with death metal. However, Human is no longer straight-up technical death metal. This was the first album where Schulinder ended writing death metal and began writing progressive death metal. This is incredibly complex music, led by the furious guitar playing of Schulinder, probably one of the best musicians in the last 25 years of music, and Paul Masvidal, who would later become known of Cynic fame. Besides being incredibly complex music, this is also fairly heavy music, probably heavier than most proggers could stand. However, don't necessarily let the heaviness and/or vocals scare you away. The instrumentation is very well-structured and tight without choking any creativity.

My favorite tracks are Flattening of Emotions and Cosmic Sea. Flattening of Emotions opens with a very complex drum build-up before racing guitars and vocals come in. Cosmic Sea is the only instrumental track on this album that is both haunting and very atmospheric. The name of the track says a lot about what it sounds like. At the time this came out, it was incredibly original and something that hadn't been done before. Quite honestly I think this album has aged very well. People who like complex, yet fresh and original music should pick this up eventually. Along with The Sound of Perseverance, this is probably my favorite Death album. However, I'm only giving it 4 stars for the purposes of this site. While this is a very good album, someone new to Death will probably want to start with one of their last two releases, Symbolic or The Sound of Perseverance.

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