DEATH レコード& CD

Review: Arriving just a year after their seminal 1987 genre-defining debut LP Scream Bloody Gore, Floridian death metal pioneers Death and their creative mastermind Chuck Schuldiner would perfect, not only their own sound, but the blueprint for an entire movement with 1988's sophomore effort Leprosy. The first of their projects to be recorded at Morrisound Recording in Tampa, highly regarded today as the definitive studio home of the death metal genre thanks to the work of legendary producer and engineer Scott Burns (who would go on to cut records at the same space for Sepultura, Deicide, Obituary, Cannibal Corpse), the material marked the first stylistic and tonal shift towards the far more macabre, gory, compositionally and lyrically depraved bedlam that the genre would fully morph into throughout the next decade. In short, this is a death metal classic that requires little to no introduction, complete with virtuosic guitar leads, Morse-code blast beats and inhuman guttural bellows. The initiated should hang their heads in shame if unfamiliar, while those who've never gone looking into the deep abyss of Death, might be better off continuing to live in peaceful tranquillity.