Introduction to Death’s Discography #1: The Beginning & Scream Bloody Gore

The American metal band Death is arguably one of the most influential acts in the history of metal, both in terms of prestige and broader impact. Alongside Possessed, it remains one of the best-known pioneers of death metal and one of the genre’s best-selling bands even to this day. Death’s cultural relevance and its influence within the genre should not be underestimated. According to the American philosopher Alfred Whitehead, European philosophy is merely a series of footnotes to Plato. It would be tempting to say that death metal is a series of footnotes leading back to Death.

The band’s discography contains releases that differ from one another in surprisingly significant ways, with clear development audible in both composition and arrangement. Their catalog includes heavy, relentless, and rough-edged pummeling metal, as well as more complex and multifaceted material. Every studio album the band recorded can be considered part of the canon of metal music, and as such, they are highly recommended listening for anyone interested in death metal and metal music in general. The purpose of this article series is to present the band’s body of work and offer as multifaceted a picture as possible of the band’s music and influence.

The early days

To begin with, it is worth talking a little about Death’s origins. The band was formed in Florida in 1983 under the name Mantas, playing rough thrash and speed metal. They took their name from one of their influences, Venom, whose founding member and guitarist Jeffrey Dunn used the stage name “Mantas.” Other influences included Slayer and Metallica. The lineup consisted of Chuck Schuldiner, Kam Lee, and Rick Rozz. In the band’s earliest days, bassist Dave Tett was also around, though he only played with the group during its very first sessions. In 1984, the band released the demo “Death by Metal”, which included, among other tracks, “Evil Dead,” a song that would later be recorded by Death.

Rick Rozz says in Jason Netherton’s book “Extremity Retained: Notes From the Death Metal Underground”:

I was not really an intricate kind of player, so rather than inventing anything new, we were going for more of a raw-bones, fast, thrashy kind of approach. At that time [in the ’80s], people in Florida did not have a clue what we were playing.”

In 1984, the name was permanently changed to Death, and the band released the demo tape “Reign of Terror”. There are several conflicting stories about how the band’s name came about, but Tim Aymar — who played with Chuck in Control Denied, the band formed in 1996 – said in an interview with EmptyWords that Chuck arrived at the name after the death of his brother. According to Aymar, Chuck wanted to “turn a negative experience into a positive one.” According to The Quietus, Chuck’s mother Jane has also shared the same origin story for the band’s name.

Rising in popularity

On the 1985 demo “Infernal Death”, more of the songs that would later appear on the band’s debut began to emerge. That same year, the band also released the demos “Rigor Mortis” and “Back from the Dead”.

Ian Christe writes in “Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal”:

“[Death] soon became as heavily shared by tape traders as any well-established act in metal. […] It sounded like a torture session in a suburban basement

However, the band’s singer-guitarist and principal songwriter Chuck Schuldiner soon grew tired of Florida and moved to sunny California in search of new musicians. Lee and Rozz, meanwhile, left to form Massacre. After drifting between Florida and the San Francisco Bay Area, Chuck eventually met drummer Chris Reifert, with whom he recorded the “Mutilatio”n demo in 1986. This led the band to sign a recording contract with Combat Records, the same label that also housed Possessed. The time was ripe for Scream Bloody Gore.

Scream Bloody Gore

Released in 1987, “Scream Bloody Gore” “can be regarded as a kind of Rosetta Stone of death metal, one that would serve as a guidebook for countless bands after its release. Some even consider it the first true death metal album, although Possessed had released their own debut, “Seven Churches”, two years earlier.

The album’s songs are raw and fast: the distorted guitars saw through ugly chromatic and atonal riffs, the drums pound out solid blast beats, and Schuldiner roars over it all like a man being tortured. On the album, Chuck himself handled the vocals, guitars, and bass parts, while Reifert was responsible for the drum tracks. The album had to be recorded twice, because Combat Records was not satisfied with the first version. The label also interfered somewhat with the song titles; “Sacrificial” was originally titled “Sacrificial Cunt,” but the name was changed at the label’s insistence.

Art of the macabre

The album’s iconic cover art was created by Edward Repka, who has also done cover artwork for bands such as Atheist, Massacre, and Possessed. The album was remastered and reissued in 1999, featuring bonus live versions of “Open Casket” and “Choke on It.” In 2016, Relapse Records released a massive three-CD edition of the album, which included seven songs recorded during the original Florida sessions and 24 early demos. Soon after the album’s release, Schuldiner and Reifert parted ways, and the drummer went on to form Autopsy.

Like the cover art, the song titles and lyrics draw their inspiration from horror imagery. Former Cormorant musician Arthur von Nagel argued in an NPR article that the album’s lyrics contain “slasher movie violence,” “misogyny,” and “homophobia.”

Blueprint for future death metal bands

Michelle Phillipov, meanwhile, describes the album’s lyrics in her book “Death Metal and Music Criticism: Analysis at the Limits” as follows:

“The band’s aptly titled debut album Scream Bloody Gore contains lyrics inspired by horror films. Songs like ‘Zombie Ritual’ and ‘Evil Dead’ describe zombie attacks, while ‘Sacrificial’ recounts a chainsaw murder. By contemporary standards, the depictions of murder and dismemberment in these songs are relatively tame, but Death’s use of horror violence became a blueprint for future death metal bands.”

The opening track “Infernal Death” is a fantastic introduction both to the album and to its entire musical ethos. The Drop D-tuned guitars play firm power chords, which the drums initially join with strikes before soon locking into a full beat. There is a slight looseness in the intro drum pattern that gives the recording a striking sense of organic humanity. Chuck’s first vocals on the album are heard when he lets out an anguished roar: “Die!” After that, the tempo rises dramatically and rapid tremolo riffing begins. The album could not have had a better opening.

Hail of Bullets’ Stephan Gebédi describes the experience of hearing it with his friends in an NPR article:

“The first power chords of the opening song sounded so brutal, raw and evil that we just stared at each other in disbelief. We had never heard anything like it. In that moment, we witnessed the birth of death metal.”

In the intro to “Zombie Ritual,” Chuck plays an exotic-sounding melody, further enhanced by a fourth-based harmony. That particular sound undeniably had a major influence on the guitar lines of later death metal bands, right down to Chuck’s phrasing. Here too, the tempo accelerates very quickly into aggressive riffing and blast beats. In the song’s chorus, Death’s thrash influences can be heard relatively clearly. “Mutilation” is unmistakably one of the album’s ugliest and most savage tracks, thanks to its nonstop pummeling and sheer violence. Chuck’s vocals are probably at their rawest here as well. “Evil Dead,” on the other hand, contains what is surely the most melodic riff on the album – one that already sounds very much like traditional heavy metal.

Conclusion

“Scream Bloody Gore” is a stylish and powerful first release from a band that would go on to influence the development of metal on nearly every album it made. Although Death would later move toward deeper and more refined forms of expression, for many listeners the debut’s rawness and lack of polish represent the band at its very best.

This article can fittingly be closed with an anecdote from Gorguts’ Luc Lemay, taken from “Extremity Retained: Notes From the Death Metal Underground”:

“I first got into death metal by coincidence: I went hitchhiking one day to in Quebec, where I met some friends, and they gave me a copy of ‘Scream Bloody Gore’. A guy brought it back from Florida with him, and gave it to me because he knew I liked Possessed. But man,
when I got home, I played that cassette, A side and B side, over and over, forever. I was like, “Holy fucking shit.” As soon as I heard it I was like, “I need to buy an electric guitar, and I want to sing like this guy. In that respect, it’s all because of Chuck. He literally changed my life.”