Individual Thought Patterns

Death was in an impossible physical position with their fifth album "Individual Thought Patterns." The said album, being so damn inconsistent, is somehow both their best and worst record at the same time. Indeed, their point of greatest artistic genius, and their point of most puissant adversity and musical despair, both simultaneously. Ultimately, though, the good parts drown out the bad ones, and all you're left with is the most brilliant death metal made to this date, with some annoying three-minute interruptions in-between. Needless to say, Chuck Schuldiner did it again.

Initially, I made the unfortunate mistake of listening to random individual tracks rather than the entire album in full. And even more unfortunately, the songs I picked were the worse ones of this record. I just gave up after hearing how calamitously horrible the title track was. I said to myself, "damn, this is only worth keeping for The Philosopher." After some months of sitting in my shelf, it got a full listen for the first time in a night that I was binging classic death metal albums. And finally, it clicked. It was so good, that "Altars of Madness" that I rolled right after this one sounded like kiddie death metal. It paled in comparison, one of the classics!

While it could be said that Death already transcended death metal by 1991 with "Human," this record only further solidified their position as the ultimate death metal band. Maximus metallum if you will. You can tell Chuck was seeking to make his music as progressive as he could, perhaps trying to distance himself from the then-infamous death metal scene, to appear more intellectual. He did, albeit half of it was forcedly so, and the other half was his genuine work. The "forced" progressive segments would form songs like "Overactive Imagination," the title track, and "Jealousy," while the genuine parts would form those like "Destiny," "The Philosopher" and "Mentally Blind." The latter three tracks being Death's best songs to date if you ask me. There are even songs torn between the two, like "Trapped In A Corner." Not even the songs themselves, no, not even the individual segments of the songs are free from inconsistency in this record.

The instrumental work is nothing short of magnificent. The guitar riffing is incredibly creative, technical and blows you off with emotions, whether they're anger and resentment, or sadness and despair. While it's technical and impressive all the way through, the riffing fails to consistently sound meaningful and emotional in a similar fashion to that. Oh well. Schuldiner's vocal performance is also complementary to his brilliant guitar performance, although you can sense that his vocals are beginning to weaken and degrade. Still, it's as strong as ever. Moving on to the lead guitar sections, good god they're almost a dream come true. My two favourite soloists, Chuck and LaRocque together, what more could I want? I don't think I even need to describe how unbelievably astonishing the solos are. Other than the solos, the leads in some sections are also what makes some of these songs the best of Death.

Moving on to the less sparkly shiny instruments. The foundationals, bass and the drums. Steve DiGiorgio, that handsome little cookie. His bass playing here could be described as his physical appearance can be: Beautiful. While he just forms a good bridge between the guitars and the drums in the previous record, he also makes his creativity speak here with the astonishingly good fretless bass transitions. They're so damn good. I'd pay to see DiGiorgio just do those bass parts for a couple of hours. Gene Hoglan also manages to form a synergy between his drums and DiGiorgio's bass, though it's not as noticeably great as how well Reinert (RIP) worked with DiGiorgio in the previous album. Still, the drums aren't nil in this record, and that's extra points for me.

The tones of the instruments I just talked about are also inconsistent in how they fit the tracks. Sometimes they build a sound that enables incredible parts like the post-solo section of "Mentally Blind," and sometimes they just sound weird like in "Overactive Imagination." I've been unable to replicate the sound myself. All I can say is, it baffles me how the tone, of all things, can be inconsistent in an album. It almost makes me think Chuck was, in fact, trying to make everything unpredictable and discordant here. At least the production exerts itself. It's not perfect, but eh.

I'd have wished Chuck perfected the sound he built with this album. We got Symbolic instead. I'm not complaining, Symbolic is the best Death album, in my opinion. But something as good as how this gets, with the excesses cut off, would've not only been Death's best effort, but also some of the best albums of all time.

Here's the confused reader's guide to the album:
Songs to listen: Trapped In A Corner, Mentally Blind, Destiny, Out Of Touch, The Philosopher.
Songs to avoid: Overactive Imagination, Jealousy, Individual Thought Patterns.
Mixed bags: In Human Form, Nothing Is Everything.