Initium Mortis

Left To Die's first album rerecords ten songs from the demo and rehearsal years of Death and its forerunner Mantas, and the Japanese label DIW on METAL issued it on 19 August 2026 as a ten-track CD, DYMC6102, priced at JPY 3,300 including tax. Its opener, "Legion Of Doom", is a song Chuck Schuldiner and Chris Reifert began recording for Scream Bloody Gore but never finished, and Terry Butler notes that its main riff later resurfaced in Death's "Spiritual Healing"; "Witch of Hell" goes back to Death's earliest live demos. Matt Harvey went through the Mantas and Death demos and rehearsals of roughly 1983 to 1987, and the band settled on the songs that made the most coherent album, leaving "Back From The Dead" and "Skill To Kill" aside; most fans had known this material only from boom-box tapes copied until they were barely audible, and the band wanted it heard with a proper production. The four first came together to play Death's Leprosy, which also holds the song that gave them their name: Butler and guitarist Rick Rozz, both in Death's early line-ups, with Gruesome's founders, Harvey on vocals and guitar and Gus Rios on drums. They have since taken Leprosy and Scream Bloody Gore material around the US, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Australia, including two nights at Space Odd in Tokyo in March 2025. Relapse Records released the album on 17 July 2026 on CD (RR76402), LP, cassette and digital formats, with the same ten songs in the same order; Matt LaPlant mixed and mastered it at Madtown Mix Studio, and Dan Goldsworthy made the cover art. Relapse posted official audio of three songs ahead of the release, "Archangel" in May, "Witch of Hell" in June and "Legion Of Doom" in July, then a full-album stream on release day.