Individual Thought Patterns

Death begin to take the path of least resistence on "I.T.P." and attempt to bring a sense of "intelligence" to their sound. (Something they may have seen as lacking on the earlier releases...) Sadly, this direction also shows the band falling from their daring deametal roots into a more "speed" oriented sound that grinds along leaning towards a certain "hyper-thrash". The performances here are amazing as usual (you can't expect less from Andy LaRoque right?) and the production is considerably good compared to most death metal oriented releases. Sadly, the overall concept of death is beginning to slip into the typical political metal that removes them from the genre they helped begin. Chuck's "wisdom" in the lyrics is rather plain...and his music is starting to lose some of the brutality that marked early death as being the fore-runners of the heaviest sub-genre of metal.

Chuck, despite his decay into slightly boring "thought-death" still manages to raise a few storms on "In Human Form", "Overactive Imagination" and "The Philosopher". While not as interesting as these few mentioned the rest of the CD is consistent and at least shows a band that has yet to completely devolve into songless skill displays. Chuck may be lacking the huge hooking riffs of earlier records...but his songcraft passes for enjoyable with both occasional hook (nothing compared to Scream Bloody Gore) and heft that managed to keep to drift from traditional death metal...but not weaken into traditional thrash or speed metal. Of course, the above mentioned moments are the only possible classics...but this is not to say that the rest is composed in a poor manner.

Death took a sharp turn for the worst after this release and I can't say that I care too much. After the first three classics...Chuck had little to prove. This step towards increased complexity also chips away at the engaging nature that made the first few Death albums so fascinating.

Oh well...you can't win the all...

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