There’s a moment in “Secret Face,” a major highlight of Death’s fourth album, 1991’s Human, that sums up what made them such a fantastic band and what would make death metal as a sub-genre quite as mighty as it has grown to be, it being at a relatively embryonic stage at the time of Human’s conception, but in extremely capable hands in the form of the likes of tragic Death mastermind Chuck Schuldiner. The track has ramped up for two minutes when, after a brief but truly beautiful riff, the rug is pulled away and a rampaging air raid of scorching guitar fire is unleashed to soak the track with its color.

The moment I’ve just described is as strong an encapsulation as any of the extremes of death metal in the sense of both musicality and meaning. It’s an orgasming solo played over a furious, ironclad strum, every bit as melody-drenched as it is heavy. The ability of a band with a sound like that of Death to tower and crumble away again simultaneously is a wondrous one, and Human builds on earlier works with a delightful blend of technicality and evocative sound to establish a crucial early entry in the progressive metal canon, while subsequent albums would develop the ideas contained here further and further down metal’s evolutionary scale before acts like Edge Of Sanity and Opeth took the baton. Switching things up, the lyrics are as significantly self-reflective as anything those bands would craft later, reflecting the crushing but impossibly comfortable vibe of the album very well.

Another feature of the record that needs to be mentioned is the inclusion of the ever-divisive extreme vocal. Despite extreme punk bubbling under the surface throughout the 1980s, for a 1991 take, Schuldiner’s vocals are as dissonant as anything recorded since and presumably before. That, like the blazing fretboard abuse on offer, makes the album as much Converge and Dillinger Escape Plan in extremity as it is anything from the death scene. It’s the only way vocals cold be cut to as elastic a metal track as “Suicide Machine” or the back and forth, tear-inducing precision of “Vacant Planets.” To call anything on Human ‘robot-like’ or anything along those lines would be an almighty insult to the honest warmth it generates, which proves weirdly inviting. The production sounds huge and vibrant, as well as having room to breathe and morph into life without ever becoming claustrophobic. It’s not a blockbuster sound that all metal bands, particularly lesser-appreciated ones, have been able to rely on.

Despite being an album where importance within the genre is heavily evident, Human had sold only over 500,000 copies worldwide as of a couple of years ago, and has presumably not added any sort of whopping figure to that total since. Its most well-known track, the still barely recognised “Lack Of Comprehension,” managed to reach the status of minor MTV anthem in the same year that “Nevermind” was launched to world domination with what was presumably considered a hard sound in the mainstream. It was too early for me to remember, but we all know now that Cobain’s pop was his pull. A universe apart from that, the melodic hailstorm and sniper rifle riffs of one of Schuldiner’s finest half hours is a hugely influential segment of metal history from a band which, on some level for sure, gave its name to the movement, from its anti-iconic drum opening through every bouncing, blasting breakdown.

by Michael