Spiritual Healing

This is the third album, and the one on which Chuck Schuldiner's band left gore lyrics and straight-ahead death metal behind. It was recorded at Morrisound Recording in Tampa, Florida, with Scott Burns producing. It is the only Death album with both guitarist James Murphy and bassist Terry Butler, and the last with drummer Bill Andrews. For the six weeks of recording and mixing, the members and their manager Eric Greif shared a single motel room at the Safari Inn near Busch Gardens. Butler recalls Burns removing a stray cymbal hit by cutting the tape with a razor and splicing it back together, and has said that Murphy, having mislaid his tremolo bar, played the solo on the title track with a screwdriver. The intricate metres and the lead guitar traded between Schuldiner and Murphy are what put distance between this record and the two before it. It keeps the conventions of the genre while plainly deciding where to go next, and opinion at the time was split. It is also the last Death sleeve painted by Ed Repka. The running order here is the original's as printed.