Review Summary: Death breaking away from Death Metal
In 1991, when Death Metal was at its creative peak, Chuck Schuldiner recruited fresh members from fellow metal bands Cynic and Sadus to record and release
Human after refusing to tour Europe with the band's former line up. With
Human, Death went further into the direction they had already taken with their previous effort,
Spiritual Healing. Incorporating more progressive elements, these albums mark the beginning of a paradigm shift for the band, that is reflected both in the musical stylings and the lyrical themes of the band's work as well as their overall outlook.
Death Metal, in its classical incarnation, deals with themes such as darkness, violence, occultism and destruction. And it typically does so without judgement or moralization, offering an unfiltered experience to the listener, urging him to see and accept these aspects of human existence for what they are and even let him grow from the experience. On this album however, these experiences are filtered through human consciousness, with all its flaws and preconceptions, highlighting not so much the will to face these threats with courage or even curiosity as the fragility of the human psyche itself, thankfully without falling into all too obvious fatalism. This is not just reflected in the musical content of this album but it is particularly obvious in the lyrics. Just a quick glance at song titles such as 'Lack of Comprehension', 'Flattening of Emotions' or even just the title of the album itself quickly reveals that the band had broken from Death Metal and its ideological underpinnings to take an entirely different route, straying so far from the path of Death Metal that the belonging of this album to said genre could legitimately deemed questionable.
Therefore it may not come as a surprise that Schuldiner drew a lot of inspiration from metal acts of the previous generation.
No More Color, the third offering of progressive speed metal outfit Coroner, seems to be an obvious influence, as there is a lot of overlap not only on the more technical side (instrumental approach and riffing style in particular, as well song writing to a minor degree) but also the emotional impact of the music, although
Human does not quite possess the same force and creativity as
No More Color, which stems from Coroner's more lawless and thus much more flexible song writing approach. This is where Death fail on their fourth album: the song writing is entirely predictable with each track except for the instrumental adhering roughly to the same basic forumla. A linear succession of riffs, often making use of a relatively controlled modal approach with heavy use of palm muting and conspicuous rhythmic breaks between the individual riffs leads up to some sort of climax, typically accompanied by a guitar solo. The solos themselves are usually also rather strictly modal and vary in quality. For example 'Lack of Comprehension' and 'Cosmic Sea' feature great leads while solos on other tracks sound a bit lifeless at times. After the climax the first part is usually repeated in a shortened fashion, rarely offering any surprises to the listener. The aforementioned 'Cosmic Sea' manages to break out of this formula and also offers a more interesting vision than the other tracks, which are all very similar both on the surface and in essence.
As such, the album loses quite a bit of its potential. Perhaps a bit more time would have done the album good. Maybe the additional time Chuck would have had, had he decided to tour Europe already would have been sufficient, but we will not find out either way. Despite the criticism in this review, this is still a solid album even though I do not see it as the Death Metal masterpiece it is often revered as. It is definitely rather easily digestible and might therefore serve as an introduction to extreme metal to people not yet acquainted with these metal subgenres.
