Symbolic is the sixth studio album by the Metal band Death. For some reason I have always had a soft spot for this band, even before I knew what they were about. I remember when Death Metal was a new genre. At least new to me. My prejudices stated that everything needed to be superfast and with heavy growling. I got a few albums from a couple of different bands, whos names slips my mind right now. Bottom line is that I really didn’t like this new genre. I was into Heavy Metal and Thrash Metal. I was, and still am, very sensitive to vocals. If the vocals is annoying it will never be something for me.
Of course taste evolve and nowadays I might not think that the same things are annoying as I did back then. ANyway. Death was always a band that didn’t necessarily was superfast all the time. As I’m going through their discography that is even more obvious. They might have been more aggressive in the beginning but when Symbolic came out it was much more och a progressive feel to it. I like the early stuff but I also like when the compositions are a bit more complex.
But I also like riffs and I think there’s Symbolic comes up short. It’s not as interesting as the last couple of albums. Even if the song structures are still complex, the riffs themselves doesn’t do it for me. It becomes boring and I can’t really differentiate the songs from each other.
All track are by Chuck Shuldiner as usual. He also did vocals and guitar and even produced if I’m not mistaken. The second guitar is handled by Bobby Koelble. Kelly Conlon is credited for bass duties and the drums are laid down by Gene Hoglan. There might be som drum machines on there too, I’m not certain.
