Scream Bloody Gore is the first album from the Death Metal pioneer band Death. I wouldn’t say that it was a one man band, but I think bandleader and only constant member Chuck Shuldiner was to Death what Lemmy was to Motörhead.
Scream Bloody Gore has the characteristic Death Metal vocals but it’s not superfast in any way, shape or form. I would classify Scream Bloody Gore more as Thrash than Death really. It’s perhaps not as riff based as many Thrash Metal bands but this was in the early days of Thrash as well and I guess neither genre had really distinguished its arch type yet. Things were still experimental, there was no established formula to follow.
The music itself is very unpolished, which I consider to be a good thing in this perspective. But even more so, the production values. It’s not horribly bad sound quality as in early Norwegian Black Metal. But it’s certainly not as well produced as Slayer och Metallica at the time.
Despite all this, or perhaps because of this, Scream Bloody Gore is one of the earliest Death Metal albums out there and I like it. It serves more as a bridge between existing Thrash Metal and something new and heavier that were about to be created. It’s still pretty simple songs and a founding stone for something to be. But that energy…
If you were to look at it from an influential point of view Scream Bloody Gore should be of the scale. But from a more distanced point of view I think it’s a good bit on the way but Death’s sound is not yet finished and they’re still beginners at this point.
