HEAVY METAL HISTORY: Spiritual Healing – Death

March 30, 2025 Amy Bowles

Floridian band, DEATH, are a pioneering force and household name within the death metal genre. Touching the hearts of outcasts throughout the generations, their timeless legacy continues to live on through today, even after their sadly brief career. At the centre, Chuck Schuldiner, the glue that held the band together throughout their numerous changes, pushing fresh takes on the genre and exceptional songwriting, who unfortunately met his demise in the early 2000’s at age 34.

The late 80s were an incredible time for metal and DEATH immediately slotted in next to powerhouses at the time. The band’s first record, Scream Bloody Gore (1987), was regarded as the “first true death metal album”. Its amateur flare and bludgeoning extremity was well received within the death metal community. A whirlwind of thrash and death metal, the record encapsulated the rage and aggression that coursed through the veins of both the band and fans. Their second album, Leprosy (1988), leaned into the popularity of trash at the time, being released at the same year as VIO-LENCE’s Eternal Nightmare and TESTAMENT’s The New Order. Described as being ahead of its time, Leprosy was still extreme but a sharper, cleaner cut than their first release. Bringing on board producer Scott Burn fine-tuned the output without losing their ‘pissed-off’ energy.

And then we arrive at Spiritual Healing in 1990, the weird cousin at the family wedding. Every great band has to have an anomaly album and Spiritual Healing was DEATH’s transitional experiment. An avant-garde cut that gracefully blurred the parameters of their standard death metal offering, stepping into unchartered progressive territories. Recorded and mixed in six weeks in the hot Floridian sun, the album marks a distinctive and enigmatic metamorphosis in their sound.

With the melody ramped up and the boisterousness slightly toned down, the record expands beyond just simple ferocity. Impressive, technical riffing and solos span the record and Schuldiner’s vocals are more intelligible having lost a bit of the gruff on previous releases. Deemed as their most “lyrically dominating” album, Schuldiner traded fictional horror-laced guts and gore lyrics for real horror-laced guts and gore lyrics, touching upon social, psychological and spiritual issues. Opening track Living Monstrosity is a fine example of this, referencing an infant “born without eyes, hands and half a brain” due to drug addiction in pregnancy.

On release, Spiritual Healing divided listeners. On the one hand fans embraced the increased melody and alluring structures and technicality, praising Chuck Schuldiner’s for his neoteric songwriting and riff abilities alongside guitarist James Murphy. Nonetheless, you can’t please everyone. Especially, hardcore extreme metal fans, for whom the dimmed brutality and cleaner production was not well received.

Overall, Spiritual Healing is a mixed bag. The variety that worms through the record is enthralling, keeping you on your toes anticipating what you’re about to face next. The tracks are not overly complex nor savage. Some tracks are relentless bangers, whereas others get lost within their surroundings. Yet, the band still manage to hit the sweet spot of what’s necessary to create a repeat worthy record.

Living Monstrosity wastes not even a single second kicking off the record, firing into a storm of thundering drums and electrifying riffs. It’s what you’d come to expect from DEATH, but you can also pick up on the band’s change in lyrical direction which expands through the record. The lyrics in Genetic Reconstruction wouldn’t be out of place on a death metal release today; “Producing a race of human machines/ Replacing what is real by using technology” and the brute heaviness in Killing Spree mirrors the devastating and harrowing context of the track.

Altering The Future and Defensive Personality showcase the innovation on the record. The composition and flow of both tracks go against the grain, giving you whiplash as you are thrown between intensely fast riffing and slower, palm-muted sections. Altering The Future takes on a gentler form, firing up and becoming animate during the solos. Defensive Personality feels as though it could be multiple different tracks with its numerous twists and turns. Juxtaposing clean guitar licks with meaty, atmospheric segments that have you squinting from the virulent blitz of heaviness. But, it’s the title track of the record, the centrepiece, that clinches the top spot. An almost eight minute masterpoint that switches between intricate solos and aggressive distorted riffs with a touch of black metal atmospherics. Schuldiner’s vocal performance on the track is exceptional, telling of bogus faith healers and delivering the compelling lyrics: “All the prayers in the world can’t help you now. / A killer, a taker of life is what you are” before his blood-curdling shriek of “Spiritual Healing” and melting your face off with a monstrous solo.

Spiritual Healing may not place as everyone’s favourite DEATH album. But it is nonetheless a crucial and pinnacle album in the DEATH discography. By nature, it’s still a death metal album but it’s not just a death metal album. The record offered a fresh lens on the directions death metal could be pushed in. DEATH’s embracing of experimentation in Spiritual Healing liberated them from the clutches of “extreme-for-the-sake-of-it” cuts and paved the way for the outstanding releases that were yet to come. Thankfully, DEATH continued the marriage of brutality and intricacy into their later releases, expanding upon and refining the blend. Later records Symbolic (1995) and The Sound Of Perseverance (1998) still carry the foundations of what DEATH really kicked off in Spiritual Healing. Both records are regarded in the scene as influential and sophisticated, pushing the boundaries of death metal at the time. Spiritual Healing walked so the rest of their albums could run.