Death: Ranking All 7 Studio Albums

1991 wasn’t a great time for extreme metal. The release of Metallica’s hugely popular ‘Black Album’ (which still sells five-thousand copies a week, by the way) began the slow demise of traditional thrash, only for Nirvana’s Nevermind to give the angst of grunge a massive pop-cultural relevance that stole a lot of metal’s pissed-off teenagers.

With all that in mind, Human was exactly what the contemporary metal underground needed. In an era where the genre’s biggest players were growing sick of incessant speed and felt that they needed to slow down to diversify, Death slapped them all in the mouth simultaneously by making a disc that was taut, succinct, brutal, heavy and thrashing, but also intelligent and post-modern.

It would be easy to write a full essay about Human’s brilliance, but its best feature is doubtlessly its ability to pack so much technicality and godlike musicianship into blindingly fast songs that barely scratch four minutes (a trait that would continue through follow-up Individual Thought Patterns).

Mixed and co-produced by extreme metal overlord Scott Burns, Human is a masterpiece that singlehandedly gave credence to the “technical death metal” niche, while also signalling that Death had fully spread their wings beyond what was first thought possible.