Credits:

Death

Description:

1990’s Spiritual Healing wrapped up a trilogy of Death LPs delineating the birth of a genre and featuring the childishly provocative splatter-gore cover art of the ever-popular Ed Repka; artwork that, as the years wear on, has increasingly undermined the revolutionary musical accomplishments contained within all three of the legendary Floridian death metal band’s first studio efforts. But, more importantly and accurately, Spiritual Healing closed the second chapter of Death’s career (the first having consisted of an unusually protracted self-discovery demo period), thus setting the stage for leader Chuck Schuldiner’s imminent creative peak. From a personnel perspective (always an intriguing subplot of any Death album), Schuldiner had only recently parted ways with longtime accomplice Rick Rozz and replaced him with a far more refined and versatile shredder in Atlanta-based guitar prodigy James Murphy.