Artist: Death
Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Release Date: 1998
Rating: 3 Skulls
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Title: The Sound of Perseverance Artist: Death Label: Nuclear Blast Records Release Date: 1998 Rating: 3 Skulls |
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Kefka X's Review:
Complete with three fresh new musicians (including the (in)human drum clinic, Richard Christy) and another Nietzche-influenced album concept, Schuldiner's fury shreds through the blueprints of prog for the seventh and final album in an undeniably influential and well-respected career. The Sound of Perseverance was widely acclaimed as a work of genius, solidifying Chuck's position as not only the forefather of death metal, but as a virtuoso, a pioneer of progressive death that broke out of the shell that bands such as Atheist and Pestilence incubated. And while Human, Individual Thought Patterns, and Symbolic all had proven the same point back to seven years past, The Sound of Perseverance out-progged 'em all with its whiplash-inducing off-beat time signatures and changes, not to mention Chuck's solos, stuffed excessively with more notes than Asians in a Tokyo subway during rush hour.And of course, this is where it comes apart for me. While I've always been of progressive death (Human remains one of my favorite metal albums of all time...oooh, and let's not forget its jazz-fusion-pumped industrial sequel, Focus), too much of a good thing can lead to a bad thing. Riffs that don't necessarily belong next to one another are stacked sky-high in songs that don't seem to be going anywhere but far away into the minute mark. Tracks that should have ended in four minutes time extend past seven. Of the album's nine tracks, seven of the eight original cuts are steroid-injected frosted flakes of note-dense instrumental wankery, with Schuldiner barking philosophical hymns of vocals in an intense register only dogs can hear. This leaves the confuzzled listener with a painful, oxymoronic Priest cover of "Painkiller" so unnecessary that it coincides with the rest of the album like an etude of quarter notes played by the Philharmonic Orchestra. The last and most noteworthy of the album's nine songs is the somewhat-short somewhat-acoustic guitar instrumental, "Voice of the Soul," which as powerful and inspiring as it may be, serves as an unsettling, premature eulogy to the career and life of a legacy to heavy metal.
Still, this IS Death. And anything below than an above-average rating would be heretical. To say this is was an appropriate and epic swansong to the chronicles of Death would be justifiable, as it remains a fan fav for long-time Death fans, prog elitists, and all those metalheads in between. It was the Death album Schuldiner wanted, the culmination of a genius that spanned across two decades of heavy metal, creating and contorting rules and confinements into a thing of beauty. And for that gift, we're grateful. Thanks, Chuck.
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