SCREAM BLOODY GORE

This is a very difficult album to review here, as it will be an entirely different experience for two types of listeners. It is good for a metal listener to hear an album that is of great historical significance as well as containing many memorable songs, but bad for a prog listener who will hear nothing remotely progressive or even anything that would indicate where the band would be in several years' time. Chuck Schuldiner delivered a good early death metal album, and was one of the first full lengths of this genre released. It may not be as smart and musically engaging as later DEATH albums would be, but I still find songs like Zombie Ritual hard to resist. Scream Bloody Gore generally follows the extreme thrash path of POSSESSED while taking it ever closer to what we know associate as the chief defining factors of death metal. It genuinely helped push the boundaries of heavy music, and is apparently vastly musically superior to the DEATH demos that preceeded it. It is still overwhelmingly raw and unrepentant but there's nothing as sloppy and underdeveloped as you'd find on say SODOM's In the Sign of Evil E.P.

The biggest test left is getting past the lyrics which tell simple b-movie tales of gore and death, which while pushing it a bit for 1987 is a bit of a metal cliché nowadays. It gets a bit packed with filler as it nears the end, but picks up with better cuts as it comes to a close. I can't find too much else to say about it in the context of a prog website, but it is an enjoyable although disappointing album for those familiar with later DEATH albums. 2 stars in the context of the website, 3 as a personal score.