Review by Ben for Atheist - Piece of Time (1990)

Atheist’s Piece of Time was such a ground-breaking album back in 1989. Whereas death metal in general had started to really get moving by this stage, with bands like Death, Sepultura and Morbid Angel releasing great albums, nothing this progressive and technical had been mixed into the genre. These guys were awesome musicians and knew exactly how to combine their jazzy experimentation with brutal death metal.

Randy Burkey and Kelly Shaefer created jaw dropping riffs and leads all over every track and Kelly’s vocals were unique also, managing to keep things completely intelligible while managing a hardcore, throat ripping growl. Steve Flynn’s drumming was first class, as it would have to be with all the time changes and guitar wizardry going on. It’s not often that I write about bassist’s in my reviews, mostly due to the fact I can hardly distinguish them on a fair amount of metal albums, but Roger Patterson’s work for Atheist led the way for bands such as Cynic, Pestilence and Death to utilize it as more than a sound filling instrument.

Favourite tracks for me are Piece of Time, Room with a View, I Deny and closer No Truth, but the whole 30 odd minutes are fascinating. I can only give it 4.5 due to how short it is, along with the fact that the next album would be even better. Atheist are not an underrated band, as most reviews are praising. But I do think that they don’t quite get as much credit as they should for kick starting what is a genius style of music, influencing thousands of long-haired metal lovers to raise their level of technical proficiency to a whole new level.