ZeroSymbolic7188's Reviews

I was born on a farm in the conservative midwest. I am a school teacher by occupation. I do not drink or smoke. I am not a satanist. I fucking love Electric Wizard.

What's in it for a guy like me? Well, this is going to be news for some people, but Electric Wizard is in fact a musical group, and a damn good one at that. They make mind blowing heavy psychedelic music that sounds like some of the best of Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd put together with a splash of Coven, and 2006 Dopethrone is their Magnum Opus. In other words I like this music because it's just that damn good on it's sonic merits. 

I saw the Wizard live at Royal Oak Music Hall a few years back. It was like attending a cult meeting. I knew there was going to be every manner of "you're not supposed to do this, see this, or hear this" involved. It was fuckin'' excellent. They play with a backdrop that plays black and white b-movies, stuff with a lot of horror, cult, and a dash of pornography. It was the kind of sleeze you want in a live production from this band. They lived up to the "Heaviest Band in the Universe" slogan, and they were surprising very tight. 

Go see the Wizard. Enjoy it in any manner you see fit. I'm not judging, I just want you to make it to and from the concert safe so we can do it again sometime. Maybe Let me drive, we can take the truck. 

I first heard "Dragonaut" spliced to a weird movie called Gummo. I've never seen the full movie but the clip had these white trash kids (bad hair cuts, bad intentions) riding their bikes through some dead as fuck midwestern small town. I lived in a town like that. I was one of those kids. We maybe weren't as extreme as the kids in that movie (I guess they get up to some fucked up stuff in there), but yeah, that whole feeling that something is just very wrong about where you are... it left an impression. 

Anyway that was just my little Nostalgia trip. What is Sleep's Holy Mountain?  I describe it to people as "the best Black Sabbath album that is not actually by Black Sabbath, but is better than a lot of the albums that actually are by Black Sabbath" I think that I lifted that line from Daniel Bukszpan in The Complete Encyclopedia of Heavy Metal; a fucking excellent book I would reccomend to any Metalhead. I steal that description because I beleive it's just the perfect way to get this album across.  It's Master of Reality Pt. 2. Nowadays a lot of people know Sleep by Dopesmoker/Jerusalem and it's fun journey in it's own right, and it's the album the band wanted to make so I respect it, but this is better. This is lightning in a bottle. I think I play the bass line to "Dragonaut" everytime I pick mine up. 

Get the album. Do whatever helps you relax (not drugs, drugs are bad Ummkay, I'm talking about bubble bath and inscense here). Put this on, and RIDE THE DRAGON TOWARD THE CRIMSON EYE.

P.S. It's not just about Dragonaut. The whole album is filled with equally killer shit. "Druid", "Aquarian", "Solomons Theme", "Inside the Sun", etc. No bad choices.

This how to do funeral doom the right way.

The production is crystal clear, no murky low-end clouding everything, 

Vocals: Aaron Stainthorpe is going to give you everything he has, and he has everything. I'll say that again, the singer on this album has everything you could want and he's going to give it all to you. He's got dirt, he's got clean, he's got operatics, but he's not trying to make a showcase of it-it's a very humble and restrained vocal performance. He doesn't have to constantly hold long vibratos, or do goofy acrobatics, you just know he's something special. Vulnerable is the word. That's what he has that the other singers in this sub-genre are missing. This is supposed to be crushingly sad and mournful music, but many of it's singers are either hiding behind a barely intelligable growl, a self-indulgent operatic showcase, or doing such a goofy over-dramatic thing that it loses all seriousness. Stainthorpe is extremely sincere and allows himself to feel. His voice is incredibly powerful, and yet you feel that if you could touch him he would be made of a most fragile porcelain and shatter at your finger tips. That's a doom vocal.

The guitar tone is beautiful and melancholy, and there is an electric violin working with them that feels like an integral part of the band rather than some pretentious post-edit thrown on for "muh atmosphere". It's actual atmosphere. 

The Bass is present and has a pleasant somber tone that accompanies the music without muddying it like so many others in that attempt this kind of music.

When this kind of music is done like this, it's just about my greatest joy on this mortal plane.  It's what beautiful heavy music should be. It's a bottle of red wine and a bouquette of flowers in sonic form. Perfection.

This brand of funeral doom (slow and heavy but not necessarily sad). Lives and dies with the atmosphere it creates. 

The Masculine Urge to get a boat and go hunt Moby Dick with the boys. If you've got the disease, this is the cure. 

I'm a dude that left a tripley land locked state to move to the region refered to as the Great Lakes. I have a tattoo of an Octopus that covers my  upper right arm. I am at time of post starting a nautical-themed Blackened Jazz-Metal band. This is very much my wheel house. 

Sonny, at time of post the only other review for this album says this kind of music can't get over with the ADHD crowd. I have the most intense case of ADHD you'll ever see. The deep bass of funeral doom like this is about the only thing that helps me calm down and relax. It's totally on the table, ADHD is sometimes called the disease of contradictions. The more you know.

Onto the Album:
Again, this is all about atmosphere, and somehow this band works together to play the ocean. They use vocals and instruments to make the sounds of nautical animals, one of the songs on this album is from the perspective of Moby Dick himself, and the sounds of waves crashing against the ship. They make the sound of a ship leaving port in the opening track. It's phenomenal stuff, and a true team effort. They can put you on the ship with Ishmael and Ahab even if your stuck at your work desk. What they do is truly impressive. It's like those ocean sounds tapes that were popular a while back but the heavy metal version. It's a good time.

They also have some of the highest quality merch, tons of variety in t-shirt designs and colors, highly detailed LARGE patches. Whatever, you want. They got it, and you should support them. It takes a little while to get to the states, but it's of a better quality than a lot of band merch and I appreciate that attention to detail. Attention to detail... THAT's it. That's why their atmosphere works so well. It's meticulously done-every wave and ripple. Anyways order something from this band. It's all very cool. I went for a shirt with a big metronome on it with a slogan that reads "Campaign for Musical Deceleration". I love it.

Set sail with captain AhAB. You won't regret it.

Fans of the first wave: Bathory: Under the Sign of the Black Mark.
Fans of the second wave: Mayhem: "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas" 
Me: Nocturnal Depression: Deathcade.

Allow me to explain myself, I am a very weird case when it comes to black metal. I certainly like to get raw and evil with the best of 'em but the stuff I really like is SDBM-Suicidal Depressive Black Metal. I like the other thing too, but that's for a diferent website. If I explain that my absolute favorite non-Metal band is the Cure, and that "Just Like Heaven" is my favorite song, well you might want to kick my ass, but good luck with that, and I think this makes a little more sense.

Deathcade is a SDBM offering from French Black Metalers Nocturnal Depression. It's actually a compilation of their best songs over a ten year period (hence the play on decade), all punched up and reproduced. The end result is a black metal album that just sounds frankly better (to my ears at least) than every thing else in the sub-genre. What you get is mid-to-slow tempo black metal, memorable melodies, great guitar riffs, a fat bass tone, and moody keys. Tremelo picking and aggressive drumming make their appearances as well. Lord Lokhraed is the man on vocals. His delievery is the usual black metal rasp but filtered through absolute melancholy, and it is dramatic but he never does that offputting crying thing that some bands in this niche opt for. He is full of anger, rage, pain, and misanthropy. He also has a genuine deformity on his fretting hand, I forget the medical name, but it's refered to as "lobster claw" in layman's terms. He makes incredible music despite this limitation, and the aesthetic enhances the whole theatric of the band. There are some interesting musical twists and turns in here as well, like "Spring" which is in a major key-a rarity in Black Metal.

Lyrics are of course melancholy, bleak, and angry, but they are also nostalgic, longing, and poetic. 

And this still somehow a pretty accessible album in all honesty. It's not exactly top 40 stuff  but it's well produced, and catchy enough that you can put somebody onto black metal with it. They are also amazing live from the footage available on youtube. If they ever come state-side, I don't care how far it is I am making that show!

Acquaint yourself with this if you have not.

Bolt Thrower is as consistent as it gets. They sound the same on every album.

What's the sound? It's the sound of driving the biggest, baddest, mean mother fucker of a vehicle you can imagine. Given their lyrical nature it's often a tank that comes to mind, but it could be a tank, a monster truck, the war rig from Mad Max: Fury Road, Bill Hayvermeier's Killdozer, whatever fuck-huge death machine you can conjure up-that's what Bolt Thrower sound like. I dont care if your rounding the 11th green in your golf cart at the local country club. If you have Bolt Thrower on the machine you are driving is a fuck-huge death machine. (Personally I like the BelAZ 75710).

Another way I've described Bolt Thrower is "Slayer without the boring parts, or Kerry's annoying ass whammybar bullshit.", but that doesn't do them justice. FUCK HUGE DEATH MACHINE. THAT IS THE SOUND OF BOLT THROWER. 

Why this album? It has the best production. They are incredibly consistent in their sound with 2 notable exceptions-If Karl isn't on vocals it's not quite as good (but it's still good), and the 4th Crusade is a little bit slower. This one just sounds the cleanest.

For me the secret sauce is Jo Bench. Yes, it's a woman making that rolling low-end crunch-the sound of your fuck huge death machine running over and crushing everything in it's wake. It's maybe the best bass tone I have ever heard and I'm connesiour of sorts. That thing will tear your head right off!

If this all sounds like fun. Then Bolt Thrower will be a fantastic time for you. If it doesn't sound like fun, do you even like metal?

At time of post this rates as my No.2 favorite album of all time!

Cliche, what can I say that hasn’t already been said? It’s big, it’s doom, it’s epic, it has riffs and atmosphere for days, weeks, months, years even! 

Is there a better doom metal song than Solitude? 

This a mandatory listen not just for doom heads but headbangers as a whole. Absolutely excellent! 

If there was a band I could review, a single group could rate... Well I wouldn't trade all the others away, but I'd damn sure keep this one!

I have incredibly fond memories of just the first track of this album. it's the introduction to Sam Dunn's "Metal: A Headbangers Journey" a monumental documentary that examines metal as a culture through anthropology. It contains interviews from many icons of heavy metal. All-around good stuff. The track is called "Laid to Rest" and it was also featured in a Guitar Hero video game, I think the 3rd installment but feel free to fact check me. I played the absolute hell out of this thing till I could nail it-good times indeed. It's a damn fine sampler of what the album has in store for you.

I actually, blew an entire car sound system listening to this album on repeat at skull splitting volumes. They were just the factory ones though so now I had an excuse to buy some good shit. Thanks Lamb of God! 

What's the sound? Well, the Patch on my Battle Jacket reads "Pure American Heavy Metal" and I think that's a perfect descriptor. The lyrical content of this album is largely inspired by the Iraqi war, and it deals with the consequences of battle, the toll it takes on soldiers, and the politics behind world conflict. It's very heavy hitting stuff. Randy Blythe aggressively roars these lyrics in a voice I would describe as a mix of Tom Araya at his most passionate (think Mandatory Suicide) combined with the southern tough guy swagger of Phil Anselmo, with a dash of his own unique timbre. He is backed by the dual guitar attack of Willie Adler and Mark Morton while John Campbell holds down the low end on the bass guitar. They play a breed of southern heavy metal that I would describe as Pantera but with a dash of progressive elements-it's nothing like Dream Theater or Queensryche, just enough to give these riffs some unique flavor. On the Drum Throne is Chris Adler. In my opinion one of the absolute best in the business, again think Pantera but with just that subtle hint of prog-just a nizzle. It all combines into a tight package full of music that is catchy, hard hitting, and tremendously heavy. I made a lot of reference to Pantera here, but Lamb of God are not a clone. They are very much their own thing. 

I got to see it all live on Slayer's alleged farewell tour. I believe it was in July at an outdoor venue called Freedom Hill, which is about the most perfect time and place to see Lamb of God. The tour roster included Testament, Behemoth, Anthrax, Lamb of God, and of course Slayer. Lamb of God stole the show. Slayer had an incredible live production, and a legendary catalogue, don't get me wrong-even with the absence of Jeff Hanneman, Gary Holt is a thrash metal vet and did a damn good job in a situation nobody would envy-that's still FUCKIN' SLAYER up there. They kicked ass, but in my opinion, and going from crowd reaction Lamb of God was the best band on stage that night. 

TL;DR: This is a masterpiece of Modern American Heavy Metal, go acquaint yourself. Go See Lamb of God live. 

NOW YOU'VE GOT SOMETHING TO DIE FOR!

I limited myself to one album per band for my top 20 list, with the exception of Death-they get two because they are the top dogs.

Picking which Type O Negative album I was going to go with was very difficult, everything they did is worth a listen, except Slow, Deep, and Hard-the result of a drunken binge, and shitty leftovers. Also The Origin of Feces isn't a real album. Seriously, that album and it's cover are a conspiracy and not real. Yessir, so you never ever ever need to look for it, or know anything about it. Type O Negative Debuted with Bloody Kisses and the rest is history. 

I ultimately went with World Coming Down because its the one that I have the deepest emotional connection with. This is the album that got me through my darkest days. I've never touched hard drugs, so  I don't directly relate to "White Slavery" but I remember living in a shitty 1 bedroom appartment, with no furniture, hungry and cold in the middle of December in Michigan (It's so goddamn cold up here man), sitting on the floor listening to the album and when Pete says "I've Lost Myself Again". Please believe I felt that to my very core.

While that was happening I was working a soul destroying job at an evil fucking company, and my mother passed away of a sudden heart-attack at 52. I talked to her at about 7pm one evening and she was dead by morning the next day. No warning, just dropped dead. Sometimes people just fucking die. I think you know where I'm going with this if you know this album.

I was driving to work at that god forsaken place debating whether or not to drive into to oncoming traffic and I decided to do a double shot of "Everyone I Love is Dead", and "Everything Dies." Instead. My grandmother also passed later that month, and wifey and I put down our Huskey  (first dog as a couple) 2 months later.  Marriage wasn't exactly failing, but it had been strained for sure, and yeah... "I know that my World is Coming Down-so bring it down". 

This is a rough ass album, but it's also got "Creepy Green Light", and "All Hallows Eve" which keep the bands usual October vibes going. Fun songs for the season.

"Who will Save the Sane?" Is admittedly kinda mid, at least it doesn't do anything for me. "The Beatles Medley" Is weird but that's just fine.

I saved the best for last. It's time to talk about "Pyretta Blaze". My favorite song by Type-O-Negative. 

Lyrically this song describes a fantasy Pete had of setting a house on fire and making love to someone inside of it, as the flames burned it to the ground and then perishing with his lover as the flames engulfed them both. That's gonna sound like some fucked up shit, but if you were in tune with gothic imagery in the late 90s and early 2000s this was considered incredibly romantic. It's meant to be taken metaphorically not literaly. Pete wants to die with this lover, and given that her name is Pyretta Blaze, it's not a woman but the fire itself. I choose to believe this is a song about going out on your own terms. 
The music that surrounds it has that ominous impending doom feeling, the verse riff sounds like "Into the Void" or "Lord of this World" from Sabbath's Master of reality. I think it symbolizes all those heavy depressive feelings-contemplations of suicide, of being crushed by the outside world, but it lifts into this chorus that is straight up pop-the resolution to carry it out, and the relief that all these terrible feelings will finally go away. "I'm going out, but I'm going out fucking in a fiery inferno." 
 
It's a hell of a song, on a hell of an album.

This is not an easy listen, but it's worth it if your strong enough.

Addressing the Elephant in the room: Yes Mark Shelton souds like Skeletor. Now let me tell you why that's actually great.

Crystal Logic is kind of a relic of a world that doesn't really exist anymore, a world that being born in 1988, I only saw the very tale end of, but I did see it, and I have tremendous nostalgia for it. Clear your mind and I will try my best to put you there;

The internet had not been invented yet, and there were no cellphones. I promise this is not a boomer rant, just stay with me a minute. No internet, no cellphones. Television had 3 channels, and cartoons were shown on Saturday mornings. Children and Teenagers entertained themselves with pinball, arcades, comic books, and maybe an Atari 2600. See I grew up in the 90s but I grew up dirt poor in Nebraska in the 90s. My toys and entertainment were from the 70's and early 80's just like this album is. In 1983 the Nintendo Entertainment Sytem was not even out yet in the United States. I will also tack-on that Manilla Road are from Witchita Kansas. I grew up on the Nebraska-Kansas, Line; as in walking distance to a dirt road such that the driver was in Nebraska and the passenger was in Kansas. There is a certain aura I can't explain better than saying "I knew this band was from Kansas before I could confirm it."

Crystal Logic in addition to being  just great, straight forward, no-frills, ass-kicking, pure, 100% distilled Heavy Metal is also a time machine. Not nostalgia-nostalgia is longing to be in a certain time and place. Crystal Logic doesn't leave you longing, it puts you right the fuck there. It's a time machine. It is an album that puts a sonic landscape and words to those crude atari and early arcade graphics. The fact that Mark Shelton sounds like a comic book or Saturday morning cartoon character goes with their whole deal. Ronnie James Dio, Bruce Dickenson, or Robert Halford singing on this would not fit. You need Mark "The Shark" Shelton-nobody could do it better.

Crystal Logic is D&D, old-school video games, comic, books, trans-ams, camaros, and straight down the middle, no bullshit metal. It's fun, it's got riffs, it's a journey. The fact that this band is from Witchita Kansas 1983, and you even know who the fuck they are is a testament to how good this shit it. 

Journey to "Necropolis" learn the secrets and power of "Crystal Logic", try to solve "The Riddle Master", and enjoy everything else this has to offer. If you do so while drinking a Pepsi and playing Q-Bert next to a muscle car in your garage all the better. That's what this album is about.

This is the heaviest album I have ever heard. I've heard a lot of heavy albums. I've heard the most omnious, dysmal, desolate funeral doom. I've heard the most brutal, violent, disgusting death metal. I've heard the most raw, evil, and satanic Black Metal. I've heard grindcore, slam, pornogrind, power violence. I've seen what modern deathcore has to offer. I've heard faster, angrier, more downtuned, more aggressive things than this, but nothing heavier.

I wear a battle vest almost all the time. Including to the high school I work at. I insist on it. When one of the students takes interest and asks me "So Mr. Symbolic, lets cut through all the bullshit, what's the heaviest thing you've heard?" I tell them "The Monotheist Album from Celtic Frost." Without hesitation.  "What does it sound like Mr. Symbolic?"

It sounds like "A Dying God Coming into Human Flesh", and  let's consider how heavy that concept really is. Imagine being a God, a being of unfathomable power, perhaps millenia old. Then something happens that actually kills you, and when you come back from death it's as a weak and pathetic mere mortal, and you feel things like pain, hunger, cold, and fear for the first time. That's the kind of thing we are dealing with here.

It's an hour long with each track building on the prior, it get's increasingly pulverising with each track.

Imagine a small but impenetrable prison, that you are being held captive in. Now imagine that every 5 or ten minutes it's walls reinforce themselves becoming  harder and harder, more and more oppressive. That is what listening to this album feels like. It starts off from the rip in a place that most albums won't even get to, and then it just keeps building on itself. 

Despite this bleak metaphor the album is fun to listen to, but somedays it's just honest to god too much, and I'm a seasoned listener of some pretty intense stuff. For that it deserves your time. Listen to it beginning to end. It's exciting enough that you won't get bored, but you do need the whole hour to fully appreciate how heavy this shit gets. Ask around, I would not say that if it wasnt the absolute truth.

I have this album in my top 20. I love Trouble. 

Trouble are not a Christian Heavy Metal Band, and never claimed to be. They are a very good traditional heavy metal band with just enough doom elements to fit comfortably within that subgenre. That being said, I am a Christian man, and as such the typical Satan, Hell, and so on that is common aesthetic in most metal is something that I find entertaining, but not relatable (It's halloween stuff to me). Trouble introduces Christian spirituality, but they do this in a way that is ponderous not preachy, and THAT is something that I can highly relate to, and it's not heavy handed. Don't get the idea that this is anything like Stryper for example. I just mean to say that it's this aspect of the music that makes Trouble a little bit extra special for me. It's the frosting. 

Let's talk about the cake. Trouble is an excellent heavy metal unit. Everybody in this band can play, and they write very catchy music. You're going to get plenty of quality metal here. The vocals are maybe the weak point, but they aren't weak, its just that the band is so damn good that you would need somebody in the class of Dio, Halford, or Dickenson at the mic to stay on par with what the instrumentalists have to offer. Eric Wagner is damn good, he's just not quite a god.

So there you have it my honest and not at all biased Review of a Trouble album.

Mind-blowingly intense, brutal, technical, and really fuckin' fun. Those are the best adjectives I could come up with, and they don't even begin to do justice to the contents of this album. You need to put like a X100 multiplier between each of those words and even then you're still not doing it justice. I am not super familiar with deathcore and it's timeline-this album is a little outside of my usual wheel house, but I can tell you that I've been more open to the "core" subgenres because of how this album changed my view it. I think Cattle Decapitation's -Monolith of Inhumanity falls under the same category. If not that's my ignorance on display. 

With that in mind you are probably better served to take queues from other reviewers who are more specialized in that category. However, what I can tell is that this thing is a masterpiece, and that you need to hear it. Ideally you want to hear it with a good speaker system that can carry low end, because there are some extremely deep bass sounds (808 drops?) on this album that a phone/laptop/or standard car stereo are not going to do justice too. It's still great without them but I really get a kick out of that sort of thing.

If you can point me in the "more like this" direction or help me understand deathcore and other types of core music I'm a ready and willing student. Hit the DMs or comment below-I read everything and respond to most things.

PS. BRIEEE   BRIEEEE   BRIEEEEEEEEEEEEE 

Conrad "Cronos" Lant, is the most under-appreciated man in all of Heavy Metal. In the way that I consider Lemmy Kilmister to be the living avatar of Rock and Rock, I consider Cronos to be the living avatar of Heavy Metal. He is without a doubt the single strongest influence on the way that I approach playing bass guitar, and the way that I think about heavy music in general. I can not praise this man highly enough. 

I've heard and read many critics of Venom that say they weren't strong musicians, and that their work was amateur. I've also watched Cronos get more reaction from growling and smashing his bass with with his fist than countless "technically accomplished" musician will get shredding the paint off the walls. This is because Cronos understands his art and his audience. Heavy Metal is not about showing the world how smart you are, or how proficient you are at your instrument-it is about primal savage energy and making evil fucking sounds with your instruments. Venom taps into that inner-child I think a lot of metalheads have that just want to make noise. "Cronos make good sound. Cronos best chief," he's got a couple other tricks up his sleeve; The man can write a song and dial in a fucking heavy bass tone! His voice is a crystal clear animalistic growl that oozes charisma and fits the music perfectly. The other musicians on this album aren't rubbish either, it's just that Cronos is one of those front men with a presence that dwarves everything around him. If you need an analogue, John Deacon, Roger Taylor, and Brian May are all excellent musicians too, but when you think of Queen you think of Freddy Mercury, and so it is with Mantas, Abaddon, and Cronos.

Black Metal is the second album from Venom and while the production is still as raw as I like my steak, it's a big step up from the debut effort. Put bluntly this album sounds like a party being thrown by demons in hell, and it's lyrical content reinforces that imagine. For as dark and satanic as it is, it's primary focus is to entertain. It doesn't take itself so seriously that it stops being fun. The songs on it are all filled with not just catchy riffs, but catchy vocal phrasings. You can't listen to it without joining Cronos in whatever subject he's growling about, whether that be a trip to "Hell and Back", a telling of the evil deeds of "Countess Bathory", detailing a "S-A-C-R-I-F-I-C-E", or the benefits of being "Teacher's Pet". 

so what are you waiting for? LAY DOWN YOUR SOUL TO THE GOD'S ROCK AND ROLL! BLACK METAL!... BLACK METAL!!!!!.. BLACK METALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Quite a lot of people take vacations to Florida; Universal Studios, Disneyland, Beaches, and Margaritas. Not me though, I made the 17hour 1,000+mile journey from Detroit to Tampa because I wanted to tour Morrissound Studios, because that's where Chuck Recorded. Now it's not in the same building anymore, but nonetheless I felt his energy within it's walls. 

On my battle jacket, which I nearly never take off, there are 3 Patches strategically positioned. The largest patch on my back is Motorhead's Snaggletooth encircled in ROCK AND ROLL, and the Ace of Spades. My right pocket displays Black Sabbath in the purple Master of Reality font flanked by two demons, and finally on my left pocket, closest to my heart is the DEATH patch.

I listen to an epic fuck-ton of heavy metal, and while the albums in my top 20 shuffle around some, The Sound of Perseverance is always #1. 

For me this is an album beyond criticism. It represents my concept of perfect music. It has crystal clear production, and every instrument sits in it's own place complimented by the vocals. Those vocals are dirty enough to keep this an undeniably heavy album, but they aren't so piercing as in black metal, nor are they so low and guttural as to become indecipherable. Chuck belts out the lyrics in a banshee wail but you can make out everything he says. I guess that he was critical of his vocals, but I never will be. 

The technicality and progressive elements on display between guitars, bass, and drums are such that there is never any doubt that these guys are at the top of their game, but it never becomes a technical showcase at the expense of the music. Everybody is working together to serve the music, not themselves. The lyrics are just awesome, go read them as though it were a collection of poetry. I sometimes to refer to Chuck as the Bob Dylan of Death metal, because of how poetic his lyricism can be. I don't want to spoil them here for you if you haven't heard them. Just know that at this stage in the game Chuck was tackling ideas much deeper than zombies, gore, and the various ways one can expire.

If you need a single. "Spirit Crusher" is incredibly catchy and has the greatest chorus riff of all time.
If you want instrumental ambience "Voice of the Soul" is right there.
If you're into covers the final track is "Painkiller' originally by Judas Priest...

And if you just simply want the best possible music ever recorded-that's every song on the album. 

If you only listen to one heavy metal album in your life. Make it this one.