blog.jamlegend.com

JamLegend is usually a venue for emerging talent to find a worldwide audience, but sometimes, we have the privilege to bring true legends to a young and unsuspecting audience.  One such band is Death, who began their influential career in Orlando, Florida in 1983.  Death is without a doubt one of the pillars of metal, pioneering the genre of death metal (why do you think it's called "death metal"?) by pushing the horizon of what's considered "metal."  Go to any metal show, and we bet you good money you will see someone wearing a Death shirt with the band's iconic logo featuring a scythe.  The band continued to be active for a very long time, but when founder and central member Chuck Schuldiner passed away from brain cancer in 2001, Death was put to rest with him.

Death originally began as Mantas in 1983 when Schuldiner was only 16 years old with founding members Rick Rozz and Kam Lee.  The band shed the Mantas name and became Death in 1984, starting a long and steady journey to becoming metal legend.  Keep in mind the Internet didn't exist for most people in the 1980s: Death's music and reputation spread slowly as metal fans traded cassette tape recordings and read about them in fanzines.  Everyone was intrigued by this new band simply called Death with their intense, ultra-fast drum patterns, gutteral vocals, tempo/key-changes, and lightning-speed guitar solos; the music was fast, but instead of punk or hardcore's kinetic spark, it possessed a smoldering energy and gravity.  It was something people had seen glimpses of in other bands, but really crystallized in Death to become a springboard for a brand new genre.  After a few years of Schuldiner moving from city to city and subsequent member shuffles, Death finally released their debut album, the landmark Scream Bloody Gore.

Chuck Schuldiner continued writing songs and performing with Death with a rotating cast of supporting musicians, many of them in their own famous bands such as Gene Hoglan, Steve DiGiorgio, Terry Butler, etc.  He even expanded into prog metal with a second band called Control Denied.  So it was quite shocking and tragic that in 1999, Schuldiner was diagnosed with brain cancer and passed away in 2001 at a too-young age of 34 after a long, brave battle with the disease.  While Chuck Schuldiner hismself was modest and rejected the idea that he was instrumental in creating the death metal genre, the list of musicians who attended his funeral shows the breadth and depth of Schuldiner's musical influence.

As huge fans of Death, we really hope that finding Death's music on JamLegend made your day, and maybe even added something new to your perspective on the metal bands you already like.  Bands like Death come only once in a long, long while, and we're in happy disbelief that we're in the position to introduce this amazing band to a new generation of fans.  Relapse Records has released the Death discography digitally available via iTunes, and will also release works by Control Denied as well as Mantas.  For more information on Death, please visit the band's excellent official website, their MySpace page, or their Facebook page.  Enjoy "Lack of Comprehension" from the Human album below!