Death: Leprosy (pink, white & blue vinyl with splatter) [RELAPSE]

Why you'll love it

This Relapse edition puts the remastered album on pink, white & blue merge vinyl with splatter, in a deluxe silver foil laminated jacket. Loudwire ranked Leprosy among the best metal albums of the '80s, and "Pull The Plug" has been covered by Zyklon and Revocation.

This edition

• Pink, white & blue vinyl with splatter
• Silver foil laminated jacket
• Remastered

About the album

Florida in 1988 was mostly famous for oranges and retirement. Then Chuck Schuldiner took Death into Morrisound Recording in Tampa with producer Dan Johnson and engineer Scott Burns, and the state picked up a third, considerably louder export.

Schuldiner handled guitar, vocals and bass, Rick Rozz joined him on guitar, and Bill Andrews made his debut behind the kit. The songs are tighter and more structured than the raw debut: the title track grinds, "Born Dead" and "Forgotten Past" thrash, and "Left To Die" and "Primitive Ways" show Schuldiner's ear for a hook inside the brutality. "Pull The Plug," told from the point of view of someone on life support, became one of the band's signature songs, and "Open Casket" and "Choke On It" close it out. Recording took place in April 1988, and the album came out on Combat that August.

It's widely seen as a groundbreaking death metal record and a template for the Florida scene, and in 2024 Loudwire named the cover one of the scariest in metal. The splatter on this one is considerably more cheerful.

Also at Kops: more Death on vinyl · browse Metal

Tracklist

Listen

On Relapse Records (cat# RR7228), a reissue of the 1988 album.