Review by illusionist for Death - Human (1991)

Human is not necessarily my favorite Death album, but I think it was the most influential one in the formative years of my metal journey. Hearing the lyrics and instrumental intro of "Lack of Comprehension" for the first time expanded my perception of what non-Melodeath "Death Metal" was capable of as an art form. Hell, my first username on RateYourMusic was cosmic_ocean because "Cosmic Sea" was taken.

In parallel, although Human is not necessarily the best Death album outright (although it certainly has an argument), I think it likewise was the most important one for the band and for the genre at large. It was a transition album for the band, the crossroads between the more straightforward "brutal" stylings of earlier albums and the buffets of instrumental showmanship and progressive songwriting that later albums would become. The arrival of god-tier players Steve DiGiorgio on bass and Sean Reinert on drums allowed band leader Chuck Schuldiner to tap into new creative possibilities, while still viewing things squarely through a primarily Death Metal lens at this time (later albums would lean more towards Prog Metal with death metal vocals). The results accelerated every direction that the genre would spiral off in in the coming years... from Brutal Death to Techdeath to Melodeath. In particular, Human would inspire decades of Techdeath shredders.

For many, calling Human a "transition album" doesn't quite do it justice though. Indeed, the quality is so damn high (half the songs are bona-fide Death Metal classics) that it feels an affront to imply Human was simply means-to-ends in the development of the band. These people would justifiably argue that Human was also a "Best of Both Worlds" album... the precise moment in time where the stars aligned and Death found the perfect balance between their earlier and later sounds. From this perspective, Death here had sufficiently leveled up their instrumental, songwriting and production capabilities but hadn't yet lost touch with their inclination for brutality, creating a perfect storm that Death would never recapture.

Do I agree with this perspective? Well, listening to the album as I write this... it's hard not to. I more often opt for Symbolic for its flow and sheer front-to-back listenability, but Human slaps in a completely different way. The first three songs are a tour-de-force of technical yet gut-punchingly heavy yet undeniably catchy Death Metal (being all of three of these at once is NOT EASY)... and then by the time you get to that monstrous middle section of "See Through Dreams", you can no longer doubt you're listening to one of the most brilliant works in the history of the genre.

CLOSE YOUR EYES..... AND IMAGINE TO BE WITHOUT..... WHAT WE TAKE FOR GRANTED..... EVERY TIME...... WE OPEN OUR..... EEEEEEYYYYYEEEEESSSS

Now, for me, that moment is where the album peaks, so to speak. Whenever I spin Human, I typically quit after Track 6. If you refer to Paragraph 1, I obviously thought the song title and bass solo of "Cosmic Sea" were cool as a teenager, but the instrumental interlude does disrupt the unstoppable momentum the album had built up to that point. And then closing track "Vacant Planets" is the only one here that just never really gripped me. It has a cool spacey riff, but represents a disappointing conclusion for an album that was so immense through six tracks.

So is Human an immaculate masterpiece that will forever sit atop the Death Metal pyramid? Or, in retrospect, was Human more of an influential stepping stone to greater works? As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle...

One thing is for sure though. It's damn close to the top of the pyramid.