Death: Individual Thought Patterns (red, white & pink splatter vinyl) [RELAPSE]

Why you'll love it

This remastered Relapse reissue comes on red, white & pink splatter vinyl in a deluxe silver foil laminated jacket. "The Philosopher" got a video with heavy MTV airplay, and Invisible Oranges called the album one of the genre's most forward-thinking pieces.

This edition

• Red, white & pink splatter vinyl
• Remastered
• Silver foil laminated jacket
• Limited edition

About the album

After touring Human, Chuck Schuldiner went looking for a dream team and came back with Gene Hoglan of Dark Angel on drums, Andy LaRocque of King Diamond on lead guitar and Steve Di Giorgio back on fretless bass. It's the one Death album with LaRocque and the first with Hoglan, and you can hear the new chemistry from the first bars of "Overactive Imagination." Hoglan recorded on a Pearl kit with Paiste cymbals, and LaRocque doubled several of Schuldiner's rhythm parts as well as playing his solos.

Producer Scott Burns made sure the bass sat right up front this time, and Di Giorgio's brand-new fretless, nicknamed The Frog for its raw, croaky tone, is all over the record. LaRocque largely improvised his solos (though he says he came with plenty of ideas), while "In Human Form," "Jealousy," "Trapped in a Corner" and "The Philosopher" pack prog twists into tight, fast death metal.

Schuldiner hoped it would lift metal as an art form, proving you could sound heavy and melodic without tuning your guitars extra low. Thirty-odd years on, the playing is still the sort that makes guitar teachers quietly reconsider their rates.

Also at Kops: more Death on vinyl · browse Metal

Tracklist

Listen

On Relapse (cat# RR7171), a reissue of the 1993 album.