Individual Thought Patterns

Most fans of Death remember them for their classics from the glory days of the early to mid-80s Florida scene. While I love a good Zombie Ritual chanting session as good as the rest, this sort of mentality often will quickly lead a fan to abandon their favorite band the minute they start to either grow as musicians or begin repeating themselves. Like every sub-genre in the great metal umbrella, it was death metal’s turn to grow and branch out into new territory, and who better to do it than the band that carries the name of the genre they helped pioneer.

Being as this is the album that first introduced me to the band years back, naturally my perspective on death metal is tilted towards the technical side, my personal love for progressive metal and thrash also being taken into account. The many changes in tempo, the dozen or so riffs and multiple lead-breaks that funnel in and out of the song, and the lack of any boundaries apart from the limits of Chuck Schuldiner’s metaphysical awareness all appeal to the riff and change-up enthusiast. But what really strikes me about this 10 song work is the tightness of the songwriting and the arrangement, which pushes forward with the fury of a raging bull, yet with the discipline of a well trained soldier.

The songs themselves are not terribly long, and the total length of the album is about equal to that of their early material. However, each one of these 3 to 4 minute long songs listen like a 6 or 7 minute long song. Some view this as a negative and would attribute this to over-development and deviating too much from the traditional formula that the band used in their early years, but I see it more as the same brilliance with which artists can make a 2 dimensional illustration seem 3 dimensional with a simply manipulation of size and placement. “Nothing is Everything” is only slightly longer than 3 minutes, but every time I finish listening to it I feel like I’ve experienced something similar to Maiden’s longer winded compositions.

Surprising enough as it may be, my 2 favorite songs of the mix are the ones that are probably the least appreciated by the old guard Death fan base. Being an avid fan of bands who can really throw curveballs to the listener, I was particularly taken by “Destiny”, which sports a rather beautiful acoustic intro with a keyboard of all things, before going through a maze of contrasting sections and elaborate riffs. “The Philosopher” is the most listener friendly, sporting an easily spotted chorus and the closest thing to a traditional structure on here. When seeing the video with the kid with no shirt running through the forest, you have to wonder if maybe good old Evil Chuck was making a joke out of his similar appearance to famed grunge wanker Eddie Vedder.

Though Schuldiner’s grand collection of riffs and relevant lyrics form the general frame of this colossus, the employment of classic metal mainstay Andy LaRoque is what provides the needed extravagance to bring character and a sense of regality to the mix. Every single solo on here could be described as epic, although the leads to “Trapped in a Corner” just blow me away every time. Picture a massive chorus of barbarians chanting and you have the riffs, and amongst all the masculine aggression is a lone soprano singing pristine melodies, and you’ll get a picture of the perfect contrast that exists between the solos and what surrounds them.

Regardless to what the cynical purists who cling tightly to their original pressings of “Scream Bloody Gore” and their bootlegged copies of their early demos, there is life in death metal after the songs about skull crushing, flesh tearing, and all out dismemberment that make bands like Cannibal Corpse a lyrical joke. You may not be able to tap your foot to this music, and the odd time sections might cause you to throw your neck out of alignment while head banging to them, but this album is jammed tight with inventive and exciting speed and fury. For a metal album that had to contend with legions of brain dead grunge zombies proclaiming our music passé, “Individual Thought Patterns” is about as big of a one fingered salute as you can get to the putrid, ever mutating mainstream.