Human

Looking back now, I never was a fan of Death. I wasn't back when I was twelve and just beginning to get into extreme metal; and a sudden realization, a change if heart if you will, caused by Lord Godschuldiner coming down from heaven to open my eyes towards the greatness of his works, hasn't happened yet. Therefore, I could never understand how everyone around me seemed to call this album the pinnacle of human art. I felt left out and confused, like a single guy watching a chick flick film. However, now I know I was looking for something that was never there in the first place - in the case of the chick flick viewer, a loving female companion - and in this case, enjoyable death metal. Not to say this is the worst album by Chuck and company, as it is easily the strongest out of the ones that would follow immediately afterwards, but with a late career like his, that isn't saying much.

Death's earlier albums weren't any bad; maybe a bit boring for my taste at times, but they were undeniably death metal, and without the pretentious jazzy and progressive elements that began to be pumped into their sound from this album and on. Not to say that those cannot be used correctly in a death metal context (Unquestionable Presence, anyone?), but here they sound obnoxious and out of place. The sudden line-up change between Spiritual Healing and this truly set them back a great deal, because the band ended up sacrificing creativity and essence over technicality and haphazardness. Back then, they definitely weren't as enjoyable as, say, Morbid Angel or Possessed, but one can listen to Leprosy and say "Yep, this is death metal alright" which doesn't happen with this one. I'm not saying Human isn't a death metal album - I'm saying it doesn't work as a death metal album. In fact, it could be said he actively began to find standard death metal as immature or "not artistically relevant" or some other silly Schuldinerish thing. Look at the artwork - it's not the cartoonish style of the first three, but a design that cries out "I have deep and important things to say! Listen to them!", which isn't a bad sentiment in itself, but calls into question whether he really wanted to keep playing death metal at all in the first place. Death didn't try to write an all-out extreme progressive metal album until years later, but this is the point where Chuck looked at albums like Altars of Madness, Realms of Chaos and hell, even Eaten Back to Life, and said, in a bored monotone, "Meh".

From the annoyingly scooped guitar tone to Schuldiner's empty half-growls, Human always either falls short of delivering, or just fails to deliver completely. The riffs feel not like a guitarist's effort of writing something that matched the songs, but like a guy sitting down to write a couple of disjointed licks that he proceeded to hastily paste together either with small harmonized lead sections, or by simply leaving a nudge in the middle. The guitar playing itself is flawless, as are most of the performances, but the riffs themselves aren't. In short, this album, like all of Death's later output, sounds less like death metal and more like bad progressive metal with bad growls on top. Every so and so Chuck will come up with a truly memorable riff, just to replace it almost instantly with another, less memorable riff section. The result of this is an album with a lot of riffs, albeit of average quality, and that simply fail to work from section to section. A good way to describe the riffwork presented here would be as "directionless", as even though the songs have a clear structure most of the time, the riffs don't. They just jump around and have strange changes without having any real interplay between each other. And in the end, out of their large number, only a very few remain in your head after the album is over.

One of my qualms with this album is the drumming. Not the actual drum performance, mind you; that is perfect, and on its own it's easily the best part of Human. No, the issue with it is that even though it's technically competent, it never reinforces the guitar work. It offers beats, and little fills, and a myriad of fancy things that are actually quite cool to listen to separately, but they never actually complement what the guitars are doing on top. As such, instead of adding power to the riffwork, they subtract it from an already weak composition. It truly is a sad thing; but then again it's Cynic's drummer, who works just fine when playing jazz fusion, but should be completely banned from playing death metal as a whole, ever. He lacks the groove for it, is what I mean. He doesn't understand it; he didn't understand it when playing on that horrible Focus album, and he obviously couldn't be counted on understanding it here, especially when the riffs themselves don't a lot of respect in the first place. The bottom line is that the drumming doesn't have any kind of interplay with the guitar work.

Roaming through the mediocre riffage, the horrid Schaffer-like scooped guitar tone, and the spaced-out drumming that gives you a clinic instead of breaking your head, like a stray dog looking for shelter from the rain and elements, Chuck's raspy croak never changes at all. He really is one of the worst death metal vocalists ever, as he manages to always growl in the same way through every song, with the same tone, without changing styles at all. He would try out a different (worse) style on later albums, but his delivery is always the same: Stick to that particular style for the entire duration of the album, without ever modulating it at all. He must've thought his deep, philosophical lyrics somehow went right through the fact he still had to deliver them somehow, and that at that point nobody would care at all. It's not that his style is bad, it's that his style remains the same throughout the whole album - no shrieking, no gurgling, nothing at all - like he's simply bored and wanting to go through with those cartoonish death metal vocals as fast as possible, because god forbid they actually start sounding like a convention of the genre, right?

That is not to say the album is completely devoid of worth, otherwise it would get a much lower score. "Flattening of Emotions" has a very nice main riff that thankfully is milked just the right amount of times, and the trade-off solos between Schuldiner and Masvidal are of course masterful. Thankfully, Masvidal had no input at all on the album beyond the leads, or this album would stop being merely "bad" and begin moving into "actively painful to listen" territory. For all we know, he could have added robot vocals to the beginning of "Lack of Comprehension", or even worse, asked to sing on it. Fortunately that wasn't the case, and Chuck kept him, like all of the other musicians he used, mostly away from composing duties. In the end only his jazzy solos remain, which are actually very good as he is a brilliant shredder. However - and I'm sure this one will get me a lot of hatred if the rest of my sentiments towards this album already didn't - Chuck isn't. He was always kind of a crap lead player, is what I'm saying. The man had a very predictable soloing style, and it shows a lot - especially on this album. Just do a little sloppy widdly-doo section, followed by a small eastern-sounding lick, repeat, and then let Masvidal clean up your mess (or any other of his guitarists, really. Even James Murphy had more taste than him!).

What do we have here, in the end? Actually, I have no idea. It's definitely a collection of songs, though; I give you that. Nevertheless, they don't work as a cohesive entity to give you something good, or at the very least, enjoyable. I have the impression some people see this album as a way to tell others that death metal can be smart and artistic just as fine as other genres ("Look at the cover, guys! Anatomy is so fun!"), and that their interest in the genre is, at most, transient. It's probably not all of them, but they're definitely quite a few. So there's definitely a collection of elements here that, together, in special occasions, could be called death metal; but their execution in Human leaves a lot to be desired. Sadly, this album became the face of the band (If not, it's a close second behind Symbolic) and actually a huge exponent of death metal as a whole. So there you have it - a weak album becoming a band's most remembered, the one everybody talks about as being "smart" evolving into one of the most lauded in the genre. I surely haven't heard of that one before.