**** Human by Death – Great Vintage Metal from Start to Finish

I am one of the few people to have actually seen Death play live.  As we all know, Death’s mastermind, Chuck passed on.  However, his influence to music is tremendous even to this day.  Although Death was not the most popular death metal band, in my opinion they are one of the best.  100 years from now they might still talk about Chuck.  Why?  It’s called death metal for a reason, and that is because it is named after this band, “Death.”  If I had to rate this album as far as its influence, I would have to give it 5 stars.  If I had to write it when it came out, I’d give it 4 stars.

Human is both an extremely aggressive and cerebral album, a sound which Death became noted for.  People that criticize death metal should start by trying to play this stuff.  If this music does not humble you musically, then I would say that you are a phenomenal player and have forgotten how much work it takes to get to this level of skill.  The album Human made death not only a force for creating some of the heaviest music, but also gives credence to its genre as not only valid, but par as a genre.  You could take this album and play it for any classically trained musician or any jazz musician, and if they are honest that technical prowess is an intricate part of music, they may not like the style, but they will have to admit that there is genius on this album.

So, why not 5 stars?  I have just got done praising this album more than I would ever praise most metal albums, and I didn’t give it 5 stars.  What gives?  The problem is in the fact that the vocals and the guitar just don’t mesh on this album.  It sounds like they were recorded at separate times, and then merged.  That is Chuck’s voice sounds like it was done at a different time than the rest of the album.  The bass, drums, and guitar are together though.  And, though Death does have albums where the vocals and the music mesh better, on the whole this album probably has the best songs of any Death album, but not by much, as while they were making music, if you bought a Death album, you pretty much couldn’t go wrong.

The production on Human is somewhat crude.  It hails from a time when drummers actually had to be good and they couldn’t just trigger their drums to sound the same way.  Also, since this album, guitar distortion technology greatly evolved.  As I recall, when Nu Metal bands like Def Biscuit and the Korn Tones (I can’t take credit for this ingenious term,) Chuck was vehemently denouncing them as second rate, and he especially criticized drummers for using triggers, calling it, “Cheating.”