Human

With what is arguably Death's strongest (and shortest lived) lineup, Chuck Schuldiner released "Human" on October 22, 1991. The album features Sean Reinert and Paul Masvidal, who would go on to create their own masterpieces with Cynic, and journeyman bassist Steve Di Giorgio; together with Schuldiner, the four crafted an unrelenting, brutal, yet introspective record that changed the landscape of death metal.

The structure of "Human" takes the listener from a human perspective and launches them into space to see the universe. However, transcending from the human form comes at a cost, and Death punishes the listener with an onslaught. The opening riff of the album on Flattening of Emotions is a contender for one of the top intros in metal history, as sinister guitar work weaves itself into Reinert's galloping drum intro. From flattened emotions, the listener is broken down with tracks like Suicide Machine and Together as One, tracks dealing with human suffering and with grotesque imagery of human entanglement. With each track, Death launches us higher into the cosmic plane; Secret Face describes the lucid nature of reality, and Lack of Comprehension, arguably one of Death's best songs, compels the listener to realize how little they understand about themself, and their own mistakes. Lack of Comprehension can be seen as the midway point towards the journey from reality to infinity; the intro is more slow-paced, spacey, and a step away from the machine-like riffage in the first twenty minutes of the album.

See Through Dreams is the point where the listener fades out of reality; at the end of the track, the song fades into a flat blanket of noise. It's one of the coolest production choices on the album, and demonstrates how progressive and ahead of its time Death was for paying attention to how their albums were mixed and produced. It's one of many reasons why "Human" has aged so well, almost thirty years later. Cosmic Sea, an insturmental where bass solos, ambient electronic music, and Sean Reinert's jazzy accentuations all mix themselves in death metal fashion, helps bring the listener to the Vacant Planets, where Chuck asks us to ponder "so many worlds yet to be seen that once have shared the same effects that come from greed, mass production." As we continue to kill our world, "Human" asks us to take a step away from our bodies and to consider what it means to live, and what it costs to be human.

None of this would be achievable between the epic and masterful playing from Reinert and Masvidal, who were teenagers when they recorded Human. Masvidal's guitar work creates the veneer of complexity that Chuck was missing from his earlier albums, and his solos on Flattening of Emotions, Vacant Planets, and Lack of Comprehension are ear candy. Reinert's drumming inserts a hint of jazz that would not only define technical death metal playing but would also be developed heavily by his successor, Gene Hoglan, and Reinert's work on "Human" should be celebrated for prototyping the drumming methods of a whole generation of drum players. His double kicks and complex drum patterns remain, almost thirty years later, virtually unmatched in precision and technique. And Steve Di Giorgio shines with some epic bass interludes peppered in the empty space between the violent and machine-like riffs that bury the listener throughout the album.

"Human" presents Death at its most dynamic and creative. While the albums that follow might be heavier (Individual Though Patterns) more complex (Symbolic) or more progressive (The Sound of Perseverance), "Human" provides the blueprint for the genre of technical death metal, and to this day I believe it is not only one of the most influential metal records ever written -- it's also one of the best. Thirty years later its lyrics are as relevant as ever, and it invites the listener to be brutalized out of this world and into the universe to ponder human suffering and human nature.