Trivia / Death

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• Attention Deficit Creator Disorder: Since his return to music in 2007, Kam Lee has been a member of a staggering amount of new projects, to the point that he has recorded more material since then than Death has recorded in their entire career. Since 2009, there was at least one new underground release with his vocals on it every single year up until 2019, after which Massacre reformed and became his main priority once again. Say what you will about how he acts at times, but the man is dedicated.
• Creative Differences: Chuck and James Murphy fought about everything during the latter's short tenure with the band; the former even described him as one of the most oppositional and unpleasant personalities that he had ever encountered. Murphy may or may not have been suffering from the beginnings of a brain tumor at the time (which has been documented as the cause of other instances of difficult and erratic behavior from him), but the fact of the matter is that he was one of the main reasons why Chuck stopped treating Death like a full band and more like a solo project with session musicians after the dust had settled.
• Creator Backlash: Chuck grew to dislike harsh vocals during later years, even once outright stating in 1998 that he "hated" doing it. This is the main reason he formed Control Denied.
  • While not outright trashing Scream Bloody Gore and Leprosy, Chuck stated that he felt that Death had moved far beyond the Gorn themes present on those albums, and at the end of their career, only four songs from those two albums survived in their live setlist: "Evil Dead" and "Zombie Ritual" from SBG and the title track and "Pull the Plug" from Leprosy.
  • As Death matured musically and lyrically, Chuck began to feel a sense of embarrassment towards Scream Bloody Gore, especially the homophobic lyrics in "Mutilation".
• Development Hell: Chuck recorded a lot of material for a second Control Denied album, intended to be titled When Man and Machine Collide. The surviving band members have repeatedly expressed a desire to finish it and release it, but a number of factors such as a legal dispute with the band's record company and the theft of a lot of the band's equipment have repeatedly gotten in the way.
• Troubled Production: The entire Spiritual Healing period. The band (including manager Eric Greif) spent the entire six weeks that it took to record the album living out of a motel room right down the road from Busch Gardens in Tampa, where Schuldiner and Murphy fought constantly. Relations with Butler and Andrews weren't much better, and just about every party involved has said that it's a miracle that the band even stayed together during this time. It got worse post-release, as Schuldiner refused to embark on a European tour due to what he felt was terrible routing (there was some precedent for this, as their previous European tour had been a disaster). Andrews and Butler decided to do it anyways and enlisted a pair of roadies to fill in the absent spots, which resulted in an enraged Schuldiner taking legal action and firing them from the band. It's likely that this was the reason why Chuck chose to use session musicians from that point forward so as to never have to deal with that type of internecine again.
• What Could Have Been: Before settling on Tim Aymar, two of Chuck Schuldiner's choices for the vocalist of his Control Denied project were Warrel Dane and Rob Halford.
  • Oddly enough, for a real life perspective: Chuck said in an interview had he not gone the musical route, he would have been either a cook or veterinarian. Imagine that.

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