SCREAM BLOODY GORE

Although it's not considered by everyone to be the first death metal album, no one can deny the influence this album held (and still holds) in the world of death metal. At the time this came out, I can imagine what a lot of people must have been thinking.

"What the hell is this? This is just mindless noise and screaming. This isn't music!"

Keep in mind, not many people had tried this style of music at the time this was released, so of course many people thought it was arbitrary and needless musical masturbation. I imagine many parents at the time feared for their child's little ears upon reading the lyrics to songs like "Scream Bloody Gore" and "Mutilation" due to the fact that they are very gory and repulsive. I'm sure that many parents were concerned that their kids would turn into rampant murderers from being influenced by this new "evil" music which happened to be growing steadily among teenagers at the time. To back up the malevolent lyrics is some pretty intense music.

Death metal was born from thrash; so naturally, you'll hear plenty of thrashy elements similar to Slayer, Venom, and other bands like them. There is a lot of fast and steady drumming, which sounds sonically dense and deep on the tonal level. The frantic barrage of drums adds to the violent and unstoppable rage that this album possesses. Bone breaking guitars give the music the heavier edge it needs to help differentiate it from your standard thrash. Clearly, this is Death's most primitive and unbridled album - lyrically and musically.

Along with the drum assault comes the gritty and spiky sounding guitars of Chuck Schuldiner. The screaming guitars are rather sharp in tone and calling the overall sound "ugly" would be a compliment. The introductions of each and every song is fairly interesting, which makes it easy to grab the listeners attention and pull them into the storm of insanity that follows. While the slabs of rhythm are busy crushing your bones, the brittle and dark leads emerge from the dark and hold you down by the neck with a rusty knife. The bass is easily heard in the mix while it attacks the empty spots left behind by the drums and guitars.

Chuck's vocals are nice and harsh, sounding similar to Jeff Becerra from Possessed. You have got to love the lung collapsing screams in "Infernal Death" especially the guttural and shrieking "DIE!!!!". You want some monstrous growls straight out of Hell? Well, here you have them. This album is an entire reign of death and brutality packed into one little disc.

One can debate over whether or not Death was the first death metal band. Although Possessed released Seven Churches first, they both formed around the same time. However, Death stands over Possessed with it's twenty some demos before they actually released an album, which is evidencing that Death probably could have released a full-length first. Even though Death came second, their first full-length tunes are much more memorable, powerful, and gruesome than that of Possessed. If you are at all a fan of death metal you have no excuse for not owning this. I believe that without this album, Extreme/Death Metal would not be where it is today. That is also one of the reasons why I give this album a SOLID 8 out of 10 points, regardless if it is overrated, specially because this is a prog site and normally should earn 3 stars because of that, but this album is PROGRESSIVE, not musically, but in a HISTORICAL aspect for a genre called Death Metal. Any album that can be reviewed here should deserve a review about the quality of the music, not how proggy it is. Otherwise please don't add such albums anymore.

Album rating: 8/10 points = 82 % on MPV scale = 4/5 stars

point-system: 0 - 3 points = 1 star / 3.5 - 5.5 points = 2 stars / 6 - 7 points = 3 stars / 7.5 - 8.5 points = 4 stars / 9 - 10 points = 5 stars