Review Summary: Raw, evil, and fast, Scream Bloody Gore is a great album that primarily suffers from blatant repetition.
Good ol' Scream Bloody Gore here was Death's first ever album to be released, with Chuck taking heavy influence from Possessed's classic album, Seven Churches, and creating a sound that arguably defined what death metal should sound like. Combining evil-sounding riffs with intense solos and horror movie-esque lyrics, Scream Bloody Gore sure can be fun to listen to - if you don't mind the repetition.
Vocally, this is Chuck at his most "death metal". His growls are deeper than ever, and his incredible shrieks are clearly filled with all the energy young Chuck here was capable of producing at the time. When progressing through Death's albums, you'll notice his voice getting higher with each release, and while some may argue that this was for the better, Chuck's classic vocals from Scream Bloody Gore will always hold a special place in my ears.
From an instrumental standpoint, this is probably the most simple Death has ever been. If you're looking for technical or progressive death metal, you're not gonna find it here. This is pure, old-school death metal, meaning simple yet evil riffs, raw yet fitting production, fast yet simple drumming, and intense yet short solos. If that's not your thing, you're better off listening to Death's later releases. This was back when death metal was still trying to find it's feet (and arguable found them here), so of course we shouldn't expect some sort of technical marvel already. Still, despite the simplicity, the instrumental work is very enjoyable.
However, there is one major issue with Scream Bloody Gore, and that's the repetition. Now, there are three ways in which this repetition rears it's ugly head. Firstly, the songs all sound pretty damn similar. None of the songs do anything that really makes one feel different from the other, and you could just as easily copy and past one part of a song into another and have it sound fitting. You might be able to deal with this if you're a hardcore death metal fan, but this may cause others to get bored of the album pretty quickly.
Secondly, the drumming. Remember when I said the drumming was simple? Yeah, that's not entirely a good thing here, as each song present in Scream Bloody Gore features pretty much the same kind of drumming. Sure, it's fast, but there's usually never any sort of interesting variation put into play that makes it really stand out. For example, when the fastest parts of a song are playing, the drumming sounds exactly the same for each and every song. This helps contribute to the songs-feeling-too-similar thing I was talking about before. Simplicity in drumming isn't necessarily a bad thing, you just need to make it varied to keep the listeners interested.
And thirdly, the song structures. Just about every song seems to follow the structure of "play first part of song, play fastest part of song that isn't the solo, solo, repeat step one and/or two." Sure, there might be some slight differences here and there in the formula for some songs, but that's largely what they all amount to. Again, variation would really help in this area. Unfortunately, each Death album afterwards always seemed to fall victim to having a formula that almost each and every song had to follow too, so I guess Chuck just usually never bothered with mixing things up when it comes to song structures.
Still, despite the repetition, Scream Bloody Gore is a pretty great album. Classic riffs and awesome solos really help to make this album all that more enjoyable to listen to, and Death would only improve from here.
Well, if you forget about The Sound of Perseverance, that is.
