Have you heard the news? last two Death albums are... thrash???
This is NOT a hall request, and this is NOT based on my beliefs. But there's been some talk lately that the last two Death albums, Symbolic and The Sound of Perseverance, are actually thrash metal. This talk is all over RYM reviews for the album, saying that it's light on the death and some saying that it's a hard album to determine. Metalstorm even tags the two as thash, although Symbolic still keeps the death tag. Reasoning? The lightness of heaviness in comparison to stormier albums like Altars of Madness, as well as the higher pitch of both the guitars and the vocals.
Thoughts? I'll let the real death metal junkies sort this one out.
I honestly can't understand how anyone can consider these albums to be thrash metal. It's like people automatically shift releases into thrash metal when a death metal band starts to lost it's extremity. I agree with Daniel's assessment.
After going over a bunch of death metal, I can see some elements of it in Symbolic, but they're much more faint in TSOP. Although I feel like TSOP switches from being a prog death album to a prog album on a regular basis. But I'd say that the majority goes to prog because the album is more melodramatic and emotional on a slower and higher-pitched level than death really allows.
At least some of the material on "The Sound of Perseverance" was originally intended for Chuck's clean-sung progressive metal project Control Denied so it's hardly surprising that it doesn't sound like death metal.