Death

Live in L.A. (Death and Raw) (Nuclear Blast)
by Tim Den

For many of us, Death was an integral part of growing up. Whether you’re old school and swear by Leprosy or someone who discovered the band via Individual Thought Patterns, there’s no denying that love for Chuck runs deep in the veins of us death metal fans. His songs – the brutally primitive or the technically dazzling – got us through the hellish days of adolescence. They answered both our yearning for something more rebellious and ugly than anything else on Earth, and our desire to belong to a proud movement which eventually proved itself more involved, intelligent, and imaginative than the rest of the metal genre. I was proud to be a Death fan, and still am.

Which is why Live in L.A. (Death and Raw) brings both a nostalgic smile to my face and a mournful tear to my eye. Hearing everything from classics such as “Pull the Plug” and “Suicide Machine” up to relative newbies “Trapped in a Corner” and “Flesh and the Power it Holds,” it still baffles me how fate could chose such a talented trend-setter to inflict the most damaging of illnesses upon. As I thrash-out to the dangerously technical reworkings of old tunes via the last studio line-up, I can’t help but stop and worry about Chuck as he battles for life everyday. [On Dec. 13th, 2001 at 4 PM, he lost his battle to a cancerous brain tumor. R.I.P.]
(2323 W. El Segundo Blvd. Hawthorne, CA 90250)