New releases last eight weeks: Metal

Review: Originally released in 1998, The Sound of Perseverance would serve as the seventh and subsequently final full-length from death metal pioneers Death, before mastermind Chuck Schuldiner's untimely loss due to brain cancer-related complications in 2001. Noted for being the only work with this specific line-up, featuring guitarist Shannon Hamm, drummer Richard Christy, and bassist Scott Clendenin (all members of Schuldiner's equally brilliant but often overlooked side-project Control Denied), this final death breath of fluid progressive tech-death greatness can sometimes fall through the cracks of the band's impeccable discography, and be fobbed off as a latter day addition sans the original core members, but mark our words, even the last Death album puts most modern death metal attempts to utter shame.

Review: Following on from 1988's seminal sophomore triumph Leprosy, pioneering death metal forefathers Death entered into the 90s with a work that would shift perception on, not only their own project, but the entire genre as an entity. Released in 1990, Spiritual Healing marked a notable embracing of more melodious compositions, largely due to the presence of lead guitarist James Murphy, with this LP being his only contribution to the band's discography, along with bassist Terry Butler. Coinciding with the simultaneous maximisation of technicality and melody, the album would also shift the lyrical approach of primary songwriter Chuck Schuldiner, who began moving away from gore and viscera-soaked tales and focusing more on the real-world horrors of drug addiction, poverty, serial killers, organised religion and corrupt faith healers, just like the one that adorns the iconic artwork.

Review: The mid-90s were a time of immense change for the death metal scene, strongly linked to the endless progression of the genre's most vital pioneers Death, who in retrospect, appeared to be reshaping, retooling and expanding the genre for their current and future peers in real time. Having already switched out the lyrical gore obsessions of their early material for the socio-political ponderings of 1990's Spiritual Healing, before turning to more opaque, introspective ruminations on their superbly technical, progressive death metal opus Human in 1991, a two-year gap would occur (a lengthy creative respite in terms of their prolificacy) before the arrival of 1993's Individual Thought Patterns. During this time, metal drumming legend Gene Hoglan (Testament, Fear Factory) would enter the mix along with King Diamond guitarist Andy LaRocque, and this newly refurbished line up would continue to build upon the virtuosic hyper-technical prog-death blueprint of Human, but with a major increase of oppressive, metallic menace, leading many to consider the work to be Death's most mercurial balance of artistic complexity and vicious heaviness.

Review: Arriving just a year after their seminal 1987 genre-defining debut LP Scream Bloody Gore, Floridian death metal pioneers Death and their creative mastermind Chuck Schuldiner would perfect, not only their own sound, but the blueprint for an entire movement with 1988's sophomore effort Leprosy. The first of their projects to be recorded at Morrisound Recording in Tampa, highly regarded today as the definitive studio home of the death metal genre thanks to the work of legendary producer and engineer Scott Burns (who would go on to cut records at the same space for Sepultura, Deicide, Obituary, Cannibal Corpse), the material marked the first stylistic and tonal shift towards the far more macabre, gory, compositionally and lyrically depraved bedlam that the genre would fully morph into throughout the next decade. In short, this is a death metal classic that requires little to no introduction, complete with virtuosic guitar leads, Morse-code blast beats and inhuman guttural bellows. The initiated should hang their heads in shame if unfamiliar, while those who've never gone looking into the deep abyss of Death, might be better off continuing to live in peaceful tranquillity.

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