#55 - Death

Floridian guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Chuck Shuldiner formed Death in 1983, and released their first album, Scream Bloody Gore four years later.  While it was not the polished effort they'd produce later in their career, it's pretty tight for such an ambitious departure from the norm of the day, and they have to be given credit for forging their own way as pioneers of the emerging death metal sub-genre.  In fact Chuck is rightfully regarded by many as the "Father of Death Metal".  During those early years and albums, Death essentially invented the death metal sound, characterized by growling vocals, virtuosic playing with a heavy emphasis on alternate picking and bombastic double-kick drumming, frequent time changes, chromatic harmonic progressions and atonality in the melodic writing.  But they really hit their stride in 1991 with the Human album.  By this point, Chuck had eschewed the idea of a band in the traditional sense altogether and recruited session musicians for recordings and tours.  On Human and subsequent albums, Death pursued more of a technical or progressive death metal approach (an approach that really didn't exist to that point), paving the way for hundreds of bands in one of the most interesting and impressive sub-genres of metal since.  Sadly, Chuck passed away in late 2001 after battling with brain cancer and pneumonia.

Death's more progressive releases include the afore-mentioned Human, and its successors, Individual Thought Patterns, Symbolic and The Sound of Perseverance, as well as an album under the moniker Control Denied, featuring similar music but with clean vocals.  All are excellent albums on which you can hear Chuck's distinctive guitar style and sound and some fabulous playing by sidemen including outstanding drummers Sean Reinert and Gene Hoglan and guitarists Paul Masvidal and Andy LaRocque of King Diamond fame.  I'm including the second track from 1995's Symbolic, which is probably my favorite of their albums (although I really enjoy all of their last four).  Check out the intricate drumming and Chuck's unusually atonal melodic guitar style, really paving the way for technical death metal that was to come.