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Remembering Death Metal Pioneer Chuck Schuldiner

19 ago this week, Schuldiner died after a two-year battle with brain cancer.

Death was one of the first ever death metal bands in the United States. They started in 1983 under the name Mantas and then the name was changed to Death in 1984. Chuck was only 16 years old.

Charles Michael “Chuck” Schuldiner was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He founded the band Death in 1983 and was their lead vocalist until his death in 2001

Death is no longer a band since Chuck Schuldiner died on December 13, 2001. He was 34 years old. He had brain cancer and the medication he was on to beat the cancer made him weak. He died of pneumonia. He had another band project called Control Denied during the 3 years before he died.

The UK’s 2002 issue of Kerrang! magazine said that “Chuck Schuldiner was one of the most significant figures in the history of metal.”

Original members were Schuldiner (guitar), Rick Rozz (guitar) and Kam Lee(drums and vocals). In January 1986, Schuldiner moved to Toronto and temporarily joined the Canadian band Slaughter. However, he quickly returned to continue the formation of Death.

[Chuck Schuldiner] showed the foresight and courage to not only help create the rules of death metal, but to demonstrate how to break them. — Arthur von Nagel (Cormorant)

There’s something to be said for the visionary who dismantles the very movement he’s created or pioneered. John Coltrane left behind hard bop to scatter sheets of sound, always knowing there was something more to explore. After joining the Communist Party, composer Cornelius Cardew rejected his prominent role in the English Avant-Garde to protect populist folk music. For a humble guitarist from Florida named Chuck Schuldiner, his metal band Death (not to be confused with the proto-punk band of the same name) was a mere instrument. Along with the Bay Area’s Possessed, Death not only helped spawn an entire extreme genre around gore and technical guitar wizardry, but like horror movies sometimes do, Death also challenged our notions of life.

From the 1983 Death by Metal demo by a pre-Death band called Mantas to the hollering banshee wail of Scream Bloody Gore to the early jazz-metal fusions of Human to the glorious 1998 swansong, The Sound of Perseverance, Schuldiner lived the Leonardo da Vinci creed: “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” Not one Death album was the same, but they were very much all connected; the non-linear narrative continued through Schuldiner’s formation of the scream-less progressive heavy metal band Control Denied.