Chuck Schuldiner- A Legacy not Forgotten

As few would know, my musical journey started off simple with hard rock and metal thanks to my father, most of which is based on single note tremolo, palm muted down picking or even 12 bar blues, but as one progresses they seek something more. Well my tastes have always lead towards a more extreme vein, and so I sought out bands that pushed the envelope. One such band was a band called Death. As thier foreboding name implies, they are indeed in a heavier vein, and of course thier early stuff was lackluster at best laiden with lyrics depicting the expected death metal gore. To my suprise, however, with each album the music got better, more experimental, and the lyrics became existensial, not so much about horror movies moreso about everyday life and trials we can and have all related too. So as my musical interest was piqued, so was my interest in the man behind the band.

The genius behind the bands name is Chuck Schuldiner and much to my suprise he was not obsessed with death, nor was he an overly large man with a penchant for hate. he instead saw the joy in small things, and the importance of friendship. He was a man who knew what it took to get where he wanted, often moving several times across the country and even out out of the country to find willing musicins to help him pursue his vision. Originally the vision was to become the fastest most extreme band ever, but not content with that being a fan of all music, he expanded greatly on a genre of music that usually gets overlooked.

His fretboard mastery was both emotional and technical, relying on advanced techniques at varied tempos rather than full on speed. his dedication increased all aspects of his playing. Unfortunately his skill is overlooked because of his metal driven rythms and harsh vocals.

On December 13th 2001 Chuck Schuldiner passed away from brain stem cancer. It was a sad day for me especially because it is my birthday that he died on...but in his wake he inspired a new generation of metal musicians and avid guitarists alike. He not only pioneered a genre, but he took it to new levels that even today is hard to match. For those of you who haven't heard his music, please do whenever possible. To me he will always remain a larhe inspiration in my playing.

Amen to that, Chuck was one of the all time greats and is considered by pretty much anyone who was around on the metal scene in the 80's to be the father of death metal. I remember seeing a review for Spiritual Healing in a high brow business paper where they mentioned how original the sound was and that although the music was extreme the fretwork and music was exceptional. I think they described is as 'extreme metal with brains'. That record made a huge impression on me and I was blown away by the fact that they improved on every consecutive album - my favourite is still Human though (Individual Thought Patterns is a close second). I remember seeing an interview with Chuck where he said he regretted the choice of band name and that he would have been much happier had he named the band Human. Also, he tired of the death metal vocals (his were by far the best out there IMO - exceptionally clear and expressive) so his last project was a power metal band called Control Denied.
Although Human has always been my favourite album the best fretwork has to be when he was teamed up with James Murphy - that guy really inspired me becuase he was so gifted and melodic . As far as lyrical content goes, Death were brilliant - philosophy, poetry and a bit of generic metal written in an exceptionally clever way with a delivery that kicked ass. People often overlook Chuck as a guitarist, his solos became a little overly similar and he tended to use the same scale and runs over and over, but his ability to play insanely tight uber technical rhythm gutiar while singing was unbelievable. Realy great band and he seemed like a genuinely nice guy, I was pretty devestated when I heard he had died as I was following his fight against cancer and had grown up with their music as they matured over the years. :(

<3 Death




more people care about that band than you think; i just wish nore guitarists studied him.