Individual Thought Patterns

It's 1994. Chuck Schuldiner goes nuts and decides he's an art metal practitioner now. He surrounds himself with some of the top company in metal around at the time, recruiting the legendary Gene Hoglan on drums and sets off on a quest to make Death as further sounding as it had been to the darker (and equally better) days of 'Leprosy'. The previous 'Human' had already come across as unnecessarily progressive; like the prog element was noticeably forced into the tracks; but this one takes it to a whole new level.

This album so clearly sounds like a band that just wanted to explore the progressive world, just for the heck of it, with no real project of exactly how they were going to tackle it and how it is that they were going to make Death and pure prog work cohesively. The songs are hardly songs for the most part. They are archives of riffs and leads. In short, they're drawn out jam sessions. Which would've been fine had this been some sort of Death exhibition gig with each musician contributing an intriguing part and fans grooving to the live jazz-like ambiance of improvisation and spontaneous interpretation. But this is a full length studio record, i.e. the final product that the band had years to put together, correct, move parts a different place, remove or add, restructure...until they got what ought to be songs worthy of that name.

It's ironic and telling in an odd way that the album is actually called "Individual thought patterns", the emphasis being of the first word. It's like the band in a way knew how disjointed this thing was and gave it, merely subconsciously of course, the derogatory name it rightfully deserved - but that's just an aside.

The problem is of course not just form related, it is as much content related. A random listen to most riffs on this should give an indication as to what the band are trying to do, and what they aren't trying to do: write memorable riffs that'll last through the ages. The whole point of such an endeavor is to enjoy the plurality of goods offered by the band. It is more like a buffet with ordinary dishes yet served up in amounts plenty enough to send the client into a frenzy: they won't remember specifically how good the sausages were nor the desserts or anything else really, they will just reminisce fondly about how much of it there was. Which some would say in the case of metal music, is fair enough. Only it isn't, because there's no possible excuse for writing trite riffs, ever. It doesn't matter that there are 18 riffs and leads per song - nothing justifies writing mediocre material for a full length release.

Just listen to (the ridiculously named) 'Nothing is everything' and that fare-like lead they dared to play about a minute into the song. What is going on there: was Schuldiner hired to play at some kid's birthday earlier and brought that into this record ? And while you're at it, on that part get a load of those fretless (and tireless) bass guitar farts in the background. Virtuosic bassists in metal are rare enough to be celebrated, but at which point is low end flatulence just too much ? The guy is proficient, we get it. Just a tad more attack maybe, before the bass sounds like a permanent background buildup clog in the mix ?

And the riffs are -always- the same darn thing with prog Death, aren't they ? It's like finding the usual culprits in every subsequent album. Those riffs that stink of metal stereotype that the band seemingly couldn't live without, like they were addicted to them. Of course this is the same Schuldiner who wrote those earlier albums and some riffs on here are strong; an example of this being the intro and main riff off the last track 'The Philosopher', reminiscent of good old Death with a renewed dynamism to it, until the track inevitably relapses into the album's addictive ills. Some riffs are simply awful with how basic and unimaginatively put together they are and it would take a genuine effort of indulgence for the band to find any true value there. As the listener, you have to get into it because it surely won't come and grab you like great albums do.

There's such a flatness to the music. It feels like it's living out its own self-indulgent expedition into prog land, while forgetting all about where it was headed with any hindsight, and thus abandoning the notion of self-criticism entirely. How fitting is it that there's a track on here called 'Out of touch'.