Death / YMMV - TV Tropes

Awesome Music:
- Many bands have covered the extremely simple song "Evil Dead", including Unleashed and God Dethroned. However, "Flesh and the Power It Holds" and "Spirit Crusher," both off The Sound of Perseverance, seem to ring loudest among prog death fans. And some fans think their cover of Painkiller is better than the original.
- Most fans agree that their last four albums (Human, Individual Thought Patterns, Symbolic, and The Sound of Perseverance) consist of nothing but awesome music, or at least represent Chuck's creative peak.
- "Pull the Plug" from Leprosy is considered by many death metal fans to be one of the greatest death metal songs of all time.
- It's still heavily debated to this day whether the cover of Judas Priest's "Painkiller" that closes off The Sound of Perseverance is better than the original. Given who we're talking about, that's no mean feat.
Creator Worship: Chuck Schuldiner gets this a lot, being regarded by much of the metal community as being a legit musical genius.
Critical Dissonance: While The Sound of Perseverance is loved by critics and fans of the band, opinions on the album among the metal community as a whole are slightly more varied. For the most part, it's hailed as a fantastic album by the community. But there is a Vocal Minority who argue that that even more progressive song structures and, particularly, Chuck's move from a gutteral growl to a high-pitched shriek veer too far from his band's roots for their liking.
Epic Riff: Nearly all of Death's songs have these.
Fandom Rivalry: As of the "Extreme Metal Olympics" aftermath, Death's fanbase is now engaging a rivalry with the fanbase of Dir en grey.
Gateway Series: With the possible exception of Cannibal Corpse, Death is probably the most common gateway band into death metal, particularly among thrash listeners due to how heavily Death's early sound was rooted in thrash. Death's later albums have also introduced more than a few people to Technical Death Metal.
Growing the Beard: Though Death are generally regarded by most metalheads as a remarkably consistent band, most fans agree on two definitive "growth" moments:
- Though Scream Bloody Gore is still loved by most fans, for many Leprosy is an Even Better Sequel, discarding the vast majority of thrash metal elements the band still had in favor of being even more vicious while retaining many of the strong points of the former album.
- After a slight dip with Spiritual Healing (though that had the important lyrical shift away from gore and into more complex, society-based topics), the shift to technical death metal on Human resulted in the songs just getting more and more interesting and unpredictable in direction and a string of four near-universally acclaimed albums.
Hilarious in Hindsight: "Low Life" is taken from Spiritual Healing, James Murphy's sole album with the band. He would later play guitar for fellow death metal band Konkhra on two albums, who would also release a song titled "Low Life". Becomes even more ironic knowing it was on the album directly following Murphy's departure.
Moment of Awesome: They have won second place in Loudwire's "Extreme Metal Olympics", losing only to a certain mold breaking Japanese band.
- Doubling as a Funny Moment, the usually kind Chuck Schuldiner swearing at and flipping off a heckler, culminating at having him kicked out.
Once Original, Now Common:
- When Death started off, they were among the heaviest and most lyrically vile bands going. Their two early Gorn-oriented albums, Scream Bloody Gore and Leprosy, are, nowadays, (lyrically) quite tame compared to other, later death metal bands, especially a certain one. Musically, death metal has gotten so extreme since their inception that a fan of bands like Cryptopsy or Dying Fetus can find Death to sound like elevator music in comparison (not helped by Death lacking a lot of the now-defining, most brutal features of death metal, such as excessively guttural vocals or blast beats).
- It's not just in terms of heaviness, either. Quite a few metal fans have listened to Death wondering just what was so special about them, aside from the fact that they kickstarted death metal.
Posthumous Popularity Potential: Chuck Schuldiner gets this treatment somewhat. While Death's music has always been well-respected, the bad reputation he had for a long period in his career is rarely brought up anymore. It does help that Chuck began to grow more past his bad reputation and become what he's known for these days, examples being how he once felt the nickname he was given ("The Father of Death Metal") was too much and didn't want to take credit for something he felt he didn't really do.
Replacement Scrappy: Shannon Hamm. A lot of fans saw him and still see him as one of the least interesting guitarists that Chuck had.
Tear Jerker: The ending to "Perennial Quest", where a somber acoustic guitar plays alongside a lone wailing electric guitar. This song was especially made effective by how it was placed in Death's discography: It was the last song on Symbolic, which was intended to be their last album at the time so that Chuck Schuldiner could focus more on Control Denied (who had several songs become Death songs on The Sound of Perseverance).
- "Voice of the Soul" can be this, depending on how one interprets it.
- "A Moment of Clarity" too, particularly the final passage with Chuck's guitar solo and the fadeout (for that matter, following the lyrics "Why? No, God, why?"). It's the final original song on the final Death album, and given the album's structure, "Painkiller" almost feels like a bonus track (though it's still awesome; it's quite possible Chuck put it on the album to avoid having a Downer Ending), so there's a finality to it that's rather sombre in context.

YMMV / Death

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