Review by Emir for Death - Spiritual Healing (1990)

It took me a long time to fully appreciate the value of this album because Death was such a monument in the history of death metal that each work required quite some time to be digested in my soul. For the first impression, Spiritual Healing is quite mediocre, especially compared to the albums succeeding it. However, once you reclaim your mesmerized brain after the four albums the band put forward, you actually realize that Spiritual Healing is actually fed with so much raw emotion blended with old-school horror.

Lunatic asylums, hypocrite priests, medical nightmares, and a world full of conspiracies... A mind that is shattered between the morbidity of reality and the games of its own hallucinations.... This album is overall quite psychological as much as horrific. Rather than "healing", it is almost dissecting "spirituality". Both lyrically and musically, the album tells us how our spiritual existence and the material world surrounding it became a stage that degrades our physical and mental integrity, eventually "Altering the Future" within the world of "Genetic Reconstruction". Therefore, Spiritual Healing can be defined as the first album on which Death, or specifically Chuck Schuldiner (R.I.P.) starts to "philosophize" death metal themes. 

Years after this album, Schuldiner would say in an interview: "Reality is far more evil than a demon". Yes, Spiritual Healing is the beginning point of this realism.

In terms of the band's discography, Spiritual Healing plays a key role in the musical evolution of the band, as it was on this album that the first attempts at later experiments and progressive trends that would put Death into a legendary category were made. 

Musically, the highlight of the album is the lead guitar duels of Chuck Schuldiner and James Murphy. Such collaboration is exactly what makes the album quite melodic in both riff and solo arrangements, without sacrificing death metal identity.

It may not be one of the highlights of Death's career, yet it is definitely a "must-have", both for the band and for the fans.

Trivia: Chuck's vocals in this album are the favorite "Schuldiner vocals" for the ex-Morbid Angel frontman, David Vincent. If you carefully listen to the vocal style in Blessed Are The Sick, you can easily hear the influence.