DEATH

But the Death's debut album really isn't my cup of tea. It's simply put ordinary death metal with a lot of thrash influences that remind me of Slayer or Venom. There is also a slight hardcore punk attitude within some of the tracks. The band shows some glimpses of their true talent as in the track "Sacrificial" that has some interesting slow breaks and a sharp but melodic guitar solo, the short atmospheric introduction of "Baptized In Blood" or the different kinds of screams and stunning guitar solos on "Torn To Pieces". The most interesting track on the record is probably "Evil Dead" with a great atmospheric opening, a dominant bass guitar and a simple but addicting riff. There is some light on this record but the shades are really predominant to me. That's why my final verdict is a little harsh as we don't have some dumb amateurs on here that don't know how to do a better job but some gifted musicians that lose their time and energy and lack of the creativity that could have been in here.

But most of the songs bore with similar approaches, exchangeable high speed riffs without emotions and mediocre vocals. The album feels long and is very hard to listen to from the beginning to the end. The lyrics are as superficial as the childish album title. Songs like the mediocre opener "Infernal Death" or the dumb "Mutilation" among many others only repeat other tracks on the same record and literally bore me to death, maybe that's the reason why the band called itself like this. Interesting passages of thirty seconds in many tracks are not enough to weight up the value of the songs that are generally around seven times as long as the promising passage.

Today, the death metal genre has so much diversity to offer and many excellent bands started and excelled in this genre such as my favourite's Therion and Amorphis for example. But this kind of music here is even quite closed minded and generic if we take into consideration the age of the record. At that time, many bands already experimented a lot with heavier music and developed more and more complex music. Death may be among the pioneers of their genre but even the first thrash records of Metallica or Loudness were already way more original than this soulless output. My final verdict can only be that this record is heavily overrated and not a good introduction to the works of the band.

Originally published on www.metal-archives.com on November 16th of the year 2011.

I'll give you a specific point on the album as an example. Two minutes into ''Scavenger of Human Sorrow'', I'm on the fourth riff already. This is simply riff overkill, and the way Death transition between two riffs is extremely kneejerk. It's like getting constant musical whiplash; it doesn't feel good at all even if the first two minutes is completely recapitulated later on in the number.

Take that specific gripe and spread it across the album; for most of the songs, I have the same problem. Since there are so many like this, the album blends into a forgettable menagerie of rifferama. The fact that most songs like this are five to seven (sometimes eight) minutes in length makes listening to this more of an exercise that leaves me completely drained.

Two exceptions: the instrumental ''Voice of the Soul'' (a very beautiful soundscape; makes me understand the potential of the band) and ''Painkiller'', a cover of a very thrashy Judas Priest song done quite well.

It's such a shame that I am repelled to this album as much as I am. The sound is crisp, clear and vital. The bass has significant importance (and I can hear it). I can enjoy the vocals on the album very much. It's those traits and the two songs I singled out that keep me from dooming THE SOUND OF PERSERVERANCE.

"Vivus!" features two full shows, but there are fadeouts between tracks, so it's not necessarily apparent that you are listening to full shows. You never get a "full concert" feeling. As both shows were recorded during the same tour, there are several tracks that appear twice. The tracklists mostly represent the four last technical death metal albums by the band. It's only "Zombie Ritual" and two versions of "Pull the Plug" that represent the first three more old school death metal albums.

The band are well playing, but the processed high pitched growls by Chuck Schuldiner, sound odd and don't do the music much justice. But I guess it's no surprise as the vocals on "The Sound of Perseverance (1998)" also sounded like this. However it's the sound quality on both shows that's the real show stopper. We're talking good bootleg sound quality, but the sound is nowhere near professional live sound quality.

Quite frankly I find "Vivus!" a pretty unnecessary release. Even hardcore fans deserve live shows with a better sound quality than this and I'm actually a bit surprised that a respectable label like Relapse Records would release something like this. Live albums by death metal acts are for the most part hit and miss, and "Vivus!" most certainly belongs in the latter catagory. I predict that even the most hardcore fans will have a hard time enjoying this and a 2 star (40%) rating is warranted.

This record is a milestone of the genre , the one that all the others should be compared with. Death manages not only to give birth to a subgenre of metal with "Scream Bloddy Gore" but also with the help of Voivod , and Wachtower creates another subgenre: Progressive Extreme Metal.

When analyizing this album , one must look things from a different angle. This is not "progressive" as your average symponic prog or prog metal. Implying that progressivness is achieved here not from structure but from the technical prowness of the musicians involved. The music here is pure metal played in brutal fashion. However , what sets it apart from the previous records from the band is that: the musicians here are real masters of their instruments. Future Cynic's drummer and guitarist play here and they really deliver! Also Steve Di Giorgio's bass can be heard all over this record and Chuck's riff's are more complex than ever before. On top of that , his voice was getting better and better.

The record is really short , barely reaching 33 minutes and there are no tracks that past the 4:30 minute barrier but all tunes are filled with intense playing and memorable riffs. My favourite tracks are the opener "Flattening of emotions" and "Together as one".

Overall , this is an enormous reccomendation if you are a newcomer to the genre.Just make sure to be open minded to the music here because it's really intense and extreme , specially if you are a listener of classic prog and expect keyboards , epics , angelic vocals and stuff like that. You wont find that on Human. You've been warned!!

This is thrash taken to extreme levels with a meaner, thicker sound than the norm for its time, downtuned just enough to add a heavier sense of brutality, and adolescent, enthusiastic gore lyrics that would have been quite shocking for their time if they were decipherable. This, of course, leads into probably the most memorable aspect of this album, being the vocals. Growling and grunting vocals didn't commence with this album, but they were, and still, pretty sick. Rather than gutteral inhuman grunts, here we have insanely hoarse growls and occasional screams that effectively capture an intense vibe of sheer rage and anguish. As a whole package, these elements create a unique mix, since the instrumentation, particularly concerning the guitars, is also well played, unlike many of the sloppier grindcore bands contributing monster growling for the starving masses.

Scream Bloody Gore is essentially an early death metal album before the grindcore influences, such as blastbeats and ultra low grunts, entered the genre and merged with the more technical and vicious thrash of bands like Possessed or early Sepultura. Although it's also the least technical of Death's output, I find it personally the most fun by far. There's something hilarious about singing along to "Zombie rituuaaaal!!!" that I don't get in their more musically accomplished later works. In fact, in this rare case, my enjoyment of the band seems to dwindle with each of their succesive efforts in spite of them becoming more and more progressive and skillful in execution. I'm not sure why that is since I do admire strong technicality, but Death's later material never grabbed me more than "wow, that part sounded cool" whereas this questionable release in terms of tastefulness and competence I play more often despite its repetitive nature that I admit gets tiresome after awhile. It's like certain film directors who are better at releasing entertaining shlock than trying to release something important, profound and deep. I suppose I just dig Death when they sang about, well, death.