Death: Spiritual Healing (red, blue & black merge vinyl with splatter) [RELAPSE]

Why you'll love it

This Relapse edition is a red, blue & black merge with splatter and comes in a silver foil laminated jacket. Metal Hammer later named Spiritual Healing one of the best metal albums of the 1990s.

This edition

• Red, blue & black merge vinyl with splatter
• Silver foil laminated jacket
• Remastered

About the album

By 1990 Chuck Schuldiner had had his fill of zombies. On Death's third album he swapped the gore of the first two records for what he called real life horror, writing about genetic engineering, faith healers, serial killers and the human mind under pressure.

Schuldiner cut it with Scott Burns at Morrisound Recording in Tampa, the home of Florida death metal, with James Murphy on second guitar, Terry Butler on bass and Bill Andrews on drums. It is the one Death album with both Murphy and Butler, and the guitar interplay is sharper and more melodic than anything the band had tried. "Living Monstrosity" and "Altering the Future" open at full tilt, "Defensive Personalities" twists through tricky changes, and the seven-minute title track gives the band room to stretch.

It is often heard as the bridge between early Death and the progressive records that followed, and Butler and Murphy played it in full in Tampa in 2021 to honour Schuldiner. Swapping gore for genetics and faith healers is, by death metal standards, a rather grown-up career move.

Also at Kops: more Death on vinyl · browse Metal

Tracklist

Listen

On Relapse (cat# RR7194), a reissue of the 1990 album.