Diamonds & Rust: Death – Spiritual Healing

[Cover artwork by the unrivaled Ed Repka]

Truth be told, I have been battling my brain for quite some time over which Death album most explicitly warrants a Diamonds & Rust treatment here at Last Rites. The quickest and simplest answer is this: Any and all of them, you delightful rascals.

That being said, were we to poll the general metal populace in an attempt to discover which Death release perhaps deserves it the least, I’m guessing that regrettable distinction could very well land Spiritual Healing in the crosshairs. Before we discuss they hows and whys of that, though, it’s important to understand the following: If you count yourself a fan of Death, chances are pretty good you agree the band has no bad records, just one or two releases you like a bit less than your favorites. This is obviously an important distinction for an entity whose career, while sadly cut short, features an extraordinary seven-album run.

So, why does Spiritual Healing find its way at or towards the bottom of certain fans’ rankings? More than likely that’s largely rooted in the fact that, 1) Death’s next album, 1991’s Human, is rightly seen as their true milestone for launching the band AND death metal into a new and more sophisticated stratosphere, and 2) With Spiritual Healing, Death opted to pump the brakes and tromp out stacks of slower measures, which was largely inverse of what many other bands (and fans) were aiming for at the time. Their version of South of Heaven, if you will.

That being said, thanks partly to that scamp Newton and his third law of motion, there are also those scattered throughout the landscape that count Spiritual Healing as one of their favorite Death releases, and that’s largely due to Chuck’s decision to underscore MELODY in 1990, resulting in piles of fans who offer up Spiritual as the primeval blueprint for melodic death metal as it eventually rumbled toward melodeath.

Hey, guess what: Death is one of those bands that brought a next-level approach to innovation for every release, resulting in any one of the sacred seven standing out as a favorite, often dependent on whichever record managed to pull said listener into the game in the first place. Schuldiner wanted every album to sound singular, with a clear emphasis on progression, but he also wanted everything to remain easily recognizable as Death, with HEAVINESS as the most evident anchor. Mission extraordinarily accomplished, Mr. Schuldiner.

Here’s a bit of a curveball. There are times when I barely consider Death to even be death metal. Sure, that’s squirrellier than three squirrels banging in a top hat, given the fact that—with all due deference to Seven Churches—I have always considered 1987’s Scream Bloody Gore to be the true landing point of death metal. But even while getting down with SBG and Leprosy back in the ‘80s I mostly considered those records to be extremely HEAVY heavy metal that used some form of sorcery to unlock the next level of extremity. Actual death metal, though? I don’t recall that delineation getting tossed around in earnest until 1989, a year that delivered an endless barrage of absolute groin-pounders like Beneath the Remains, Slowly We Rot, Altars of Madness, Symphonies of Sickness, Realm of Chaos et al., all within months of each other. I mean, holy fucking shit, right? This is when death metal gained its true foothold and thereby developed its most radical features, much of which happened to be centered around ultimate aggression painted over with grim darkness. That’s where Death always seemed to set themselves apart: their relative (heavy stress on that word) lack of darkness compared to what they inspired always made them unique. Even when songs were brutally heavy and rumbling about serious or grotesque matters, they still bled this unusual form of levity and bounce. Bottom line, “Evil” Chuck didn’t actually seem all that evil, and it was evident early on that Death was quickly interested in skirting the death metal tropes they so brazenly initiated. Hell, the only thing Chuck seemed to sidestep quicker was… uh… actual death metal fans?

OH, YOU KNOW IT’S TRUE. I really don’t blame him, though. My friend and I met Chuck at a Death show around the time of Spiritual Healing‘s release, and we might as well have been literal leper Jehoves with pamphlets in our hands based on the way he spurned our salutations. That entire interaction bothered me for a good long while, and then at some point I realized that I was probably hammered, hyperactive and about as welcome as a pop-up ad for boner pills back then. (BACK THEN, he says.) Anyway, reverse the roles and I might wonder what the hell I was doing with my life if every night I had to face an endless sea of bloodthirsty blockheads getting chummed by fresh gutters from the likes of Deicide, Cannibal Corpse, etc.

So, yes, Chuck Schuldiner could be a bit of a grumpy goose, verified further by any number of interviews and stories easily within reach (the recent documentary Death By Metal is certainly recommended)—something that seemed to escalate around the time of Spiritual Healing. As it happens, I often think of this period as the true commencement of the “Miles Davis years” for Schuldiner: the point where he really underlined sole ownership of his unique and fluid vision as a musical maven, cobbling together an ever-changing crew of players he believed to be the best fit for said vision with each subsequent release, and snapping like a trapped mongrel if anyone found a way to challenge his dominion over the work and the Death entity as a whole. Does that also mean he was capable of firing people at the drop of a hat? You bet your sweet ass, hotshot. Hey, Miles Davis once fired Wayne Shorter and John Coltrane. GULP.

With Chuck’s vision shifting away from gruesome brutality and toward a more sophisticated form of heaviness, the first move was to oust wild man Rick Rozz in favor of someone who could level up the leads right alongside Schuldiner. Point of fact: sophistication was something that managed to plague the metal scene back then as much as it served, but unlike umpteen thrash bands in the late ‘80s / early ‘90s, Chuck’s incentive didn’t seem motivated by fame or fortune, but rather a passion for bringing a next level of legitimacy to extreme music. A swing from, say, Basket Case to The Dead Zone, so to speak. Anyway, band manager Eric “Griffy” Greif was charged with sacking Rozz, a move that came as little surprise to the axeman, and in his stead a fledgling shredder by the name of James Murphy was swooped in, which was a move largely based on a chance meeting where Chuck witnessed Murph wearing an Agent Steel shirt. Point of fact numero 2: band shirts were harder to come by back then, so judgement as a consequence of shirt selection was weighted even more than it is today. (Point of fact numeral III: Agent Steel once ruled the school, but that was long before a certain someone decided to take a stroll down the tinfoil-bricked road.)

Hopefully you’re already well aware of the effect James Murphy had on the metal scene in the early ‘90s. The Death gig wasn’t his first rodeo—that distinction belongs to Hallow’s Eve—but Spiritual Healing was his earliest recording, followed by guest appearances on Obituary’s classic sophomore effort Cause of Death (also in 1990), plus stints with Cancer (Death Shall Rise in 1991), Testament (Low in 1994,  The Gathering in 1999), and perhaps most notably Disincarnate, his most personal conceptualization that sadly only managed one record, 1993’s Dreams of a Carrion Kind. Not exactly breaking news at this point, but Murphy’s trajectory was also side-swiped by a brain tumor amidst all this activity, resulting in his missing out on replacing Marty Friedman in Megadeth after Marty bolted from Mustaine in 2000. Thankfully, James recovered and continues to play and guest on records today, largely supplying solos, which Spiritual Healing certainly had a hand in entrenching all those years ago.

Solos! Beyond anything else, Death’s biggest development between 1988’s Leprosy and Spiritual Healing dealt with Chuck’s decision to underscore soloing to the umpteenth power. Was this the first melodic death metal record? Yes, I’d certainly confirm that. Was it the first melodeath album? NAH, the riffs on Spiritual Healing were so chuggy and heavy and often sloooowww, so I’d join others in certifying Carcass’ Heartwork in ’94 as the first true melodeath recording—an album Carcass verified would not have existed without heavy inspiration from Murphy’s presence as a lead cohort to Schuldiner.

Chuck and James reportedly butted heads a few times throughout the recording process for Spiritual Healing, but their solos (20 of them across these 43 minutes, to be exact, though it feels more like 100) flow absolutely seamlessly—most often one after the other, and frequently without a ton of separation in terms of approach. I’ve seen fans remark that Murphy managed to outshine Chuck in this department (in my opinion, Murphy’s best lead work is on Cause of Death), but even after living with the record for 35 years I’m still not ready to concede that assertion. Both players clearly draw motivation and creativity from one another, with the overall goal focused on, but not exclusive to, searing the listener’s skin via the power of lightning. If you’re interested in a quick & easy cheatsheet for how the leads map out, I’m your huckleberry:

“Living Monstrosity” — (2:32) Murphy / Schuldiner
“Altering the Future” — (2:05) Schuldiner / Murphy
“Defensive Personalities” — (2:14) Schuldiner / Murphy
“Within the Mind” — (1:51) Murphy / (4:58) Schuldiner
“Spiritual Healing” — (3:48) Schuldiner / Murphy
“Low Life” — (2:05) Murphy / Schuldiner / Murphy / Schuldiner / Murphy / Schuldiner
“Genetic Reconstruction” — (1:39) Murphy / Schuldiner
“Killing Spree” — (1:50) Murphy / Schuldiner

Okay, so how do you get from a record like Leprosy to Human without a Spiritual Healing step in-between? Well, you don’t, obviously, but Spiritual does sit closer to the former compared to the latter in terms of overall sound. Similar to SBG and Leprosy, this record continues to lean on the big hook to nail choruses and certain riffs deep into the brain matter, something Human sort of moved away from one year later. And despite being quite a bit more adventurous than its predecessors, Spiritual Healing still manages to do the deed in a fairly straightforward manner. Sure, each song is pretty bold with respect to varied pacing, which is wonderful, but we’re still not quite in ‘progressive death metal’ territory yet, despite the seeds getting planted right away by the album’s opener.

“Living Monstrosity” kicks off in a sort of typical ‘death metal now exists thanks to thrash’ kind of way (“Better off to DIE-die-die-die-die” ~pit moshes slowly and devastatingly~), but that bit of extremely melodic climbing and swaying that lands around 2:10… We weren’t really prepared for that level of sophistication in death metal back then, and Atheist’s groundbreaking Piece of Time was still a couple months away. How can a song about being born addicted to cocaine suddenly shift into something so shiny and weirdly gleeful? Because Death, that’s why. The track of course cycles back to being devastatingly heavy after a series of lovely leads and Chuck wringing every bit of emotion out of his voice (his vocals on this record are gloriously diverse and bonkers), but the cloth napkins are already on the table.

DOOMY! No, not the forgotten eighth dwarf that never made it to the screen because he couldn’t help shouting “YOU ARE BE-WITCHED” at anyone mentioning a magic mirror, but doomy in a sense that Spiritual Healing absolutely loves dragging the listener through a bog at some point on basically every song. This rubbed some fans (aka wieners) the wrong way, but to me it mostly felt like Death wanted to channel Severed Survival and make it seem a little brighter and more ecstatic. “Altering the Future,” for example. Yes, the subject matter in this case—abortion—is obviously serious, but the unmitigated shine of those leads, the frequent reliance on bounciness, and the way that Repka album art (his last for Death) remained burned in our retinas… it all lended a unique summer-like feel, even if much of it leaned doomy. Is it wrong to happily tap your toe to someone howling, “born to be thrown in the trash to rot?” Why, yes, magic mirror, it is odd.

As strong as Side A is, though, Spiritual Healing really starts cooking once you flip to Side B. “Low Life” is a slightly off-kilter track that features a massively catchy and LOUD tremolo riff that pops in early and out again later, and it also sports the longest series of lead battles on the record; “Genetic Reconstruction” tromps out what has to be considered the album’s greasiest / heaviest riff at its outset, plus the two HAPPIEST leads you could ever hope to encounter, not to mention the fact that it was apparently inspired by, uh, an episode of That’s Incredible; and “Killing Spree,” while often cited as the album’s weakest link (honestly, it probably is), flashes a load of thrashy energy and eventually drops a total “Heartwork long before Heartwork existed” moment the second Murphy’s fantastic solo hits the speakers.

It’s the title track that wins the race, though, folding in essentially everything that makes Spiritual Healing a victory, resulting in a wonderfully adventurous, twisty-turny, exceedingly heavy number that still stands today as one of Death’s top-shelfiest Top Shelf Death songs.

Obviously not all metal fans are Death fans, just as we can be certain there are fans of death metal who find mysterious ways to not enjoy Death. But from a vantage that’s hyper-focused on innovation, musicianship and consistency, it’s not difficult to understand why so many people consider this band to be one of the most vital pieces in our totally bonkers extreme metal puzzle. Ultimately, Spiritual Healing deserves this much time and effort (and this many words) because it marks a really interesting place not only on the Death timeline, but on the death metal timeline itself. By 1990 the entire scene was wonderfully unpredictable and explosive, and here was this preeminent figure already looking for ways to push the boundaries of death metal away from so many of the elements that brought us into the scrum in the first place. This marked first step into new fertile lands, and outside of the obvious shifts in the way the band approached the lyrics and songwriting, much of the wild backstory behind Spiritual Healing is almost as juicy as the album itself. That part of the tale, however, will be left for you to explore, if you haven’t done so already. Again, definitely worth checking out Death By Metal.

Maybe it’s best to close things out with one of my favorite Spiritual Healing memories. This was the CD I immediately reached for after being the first person of four to settle into a college dorm room on move-in day waaaaay back in 1990. I picked it because the album felt like it struck the perfect balance between batshit crazy and polished finesse, and I was hoping it would serve as a mostly harmless indicator that being a roommate with me would be… a little unpredictable but fun. (It’s odd to think back on times when part of the reason we listened to extreme metal was to experience the reaction of those around us as it peeled from the speakers, no?) Strangely enough, my roommates—while not outwardly thrilled about the sounds they were hearing—mostly just seemed curious about the long-haired galoot (me) who’d already burrowed into our new cave. This was not, however, the case for the ROTC dildo from a couple doors down who used the opportunity to wedge himself into our room to snarl, “Man, I seriously hope you’re not the kind of guy who plays this crap 24/7,” which was immediately punctuated by Chuck howling:

“A PATHETIC… EXCUSE… FOR A HUMAN BEING.”

The only thing left for me to do was give an open-mouth grin and point a thumb at my thumping boombox.

THANK YOU, Chuck, for never compromising your vision as you pushed extreme metal and its fans into undiscovered territories across a full decade and now well beyond. And thank you for Spiritual Healing, one of seven essential Death albums that’s extremely worthy of being lauded as a diamond that will never lose its shine. Happy 35th!