Spiritual Healing is the third album from Death Metal forefathers Death. If you have listened to the first two albums by the band. Screaming Bloody Gore and Leprosy, you’ll find that Spiritual Healing differs quite a lot. There are more mature social commentary in the lyrics but I was never really bother by the lyrics of the first two albums anyway. I usually have a hard time hearing them since the vocals usually are very “challenging” to my ears.
I do believe that Chuck Schuldiner does a fine job as the vocalist though. Even if I don’t really hear much of the actual words, it still delivered with attitude and it sounds like he’s convinced of the subjects he’s commenting with the lyrics. He wrote them all on this album. It’s my assumption that he also was the main musical songwriter, but there are credits to both guitarist James Murphy and bassist Terry Butler on most of the songs as well. Bill Andrews Handles the drums.
To me, Spiritual Healing is a step in the right direction. It’s not long just one-dimensional music with one speed and/of riff. This is starting to be complex compositions. There are lots of time signatures and tempo changes inside the songs. That’s something that warms my heart for sure. To me, it also sounds like a few experimentations being made on SPiritual Healing. Is that a flanger I hear on the guitars on Living Monstrosity?
I do believe that the opening half ofSpiritual Healing is somewhat stronger though. It’s where the tempo changes and the complex compositions are the strongest. It kind of seems like there were not enough of those songs and that they hade to fill the album with “something” to complete it at the end. I realize that I’m over simplifying things of course, but I enjoyed the opening half more that the finishing of the album.
Overall I would call this a very strong album. And I certainly like the development the band took with this album. It’s better produced and with better sound quality than the previous two albums too. Oh… and I do like the cover art as well. There’s something classical about those graphic paintings that seems to be a lost art today.
