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. :(