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| The songs are all over the place -- they change tempo
two or three times apiece on average, and they swell and build and
burst, then rise and crest and crash again. They are like progressive
rock with all the nasty elves-and-dragons parts hacked out by some
mean guy with a scalpel. If you’ve ever taken a sharp turn at
an unadvisedly high speed, then I don’t see how you couldn’t
love this band with all your heart. They are thrilling. None of the
nu-metal bands who are presently enjoying considerable success would
sound like they do without Chuck Schuldiner’s “What if?”
approach to metal. They owe their vocal styles to him; their drummers
owe their double-kickdrum approach in part to him; their preferred
imagery comes to them from Dario Argento by way of Chuck Schuldiner,
who had the foresight to title an album “Scream Bloody Gore”
way back in 1987. He was something of a Thomas Edison in his genre.
But that isn’t why you should listen to his music. You should
listen to his music because it kicks a whole lot of ass, and because
in its astonishing technical fury you hear the sound of an artist
who, when he picked up his instrument, was in it for the long haul.
As it turned out, the long haul had other things in mind. It is a
pity. We will not see the like of him for quite some time. |
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