Chuck Schuldiner

Zero Tolerance (Candlelight)
by Tim Den

This here compilation has been the topic of heated debate ever since the late, great Chuck Schuldiner shed his mortal coil. Is Control Denied’s second album ever gonna see the light of day? Will Chuck’s mother ever allow a label to release the semi-finished album? Candlelight tries to answer these questions by packaging four old Death demos, a live recording from the Spiritual Healing tour, and four Control Denied rehearsal tracks into Zero Tolerance. The result? The Control Denied material, although decent in quality, doesn’t have any vocals or final arrangements in place, rendering it dull and lifeless. The live recording of the Death line-up that included James Murphy sounds worse than your high school four-track (the first track even starts halfway through the song!), and the collection of demos are not nearly as complete as some of the bootlegs you can find out there (try Metal Haven in Chicago for starters). I’m sure many fans like myself would force themselves to sit through these two discs out of respect for Chuck, but the truth is that the man deserves a much better retrospective than Zero Tolerance.
(www.candlelightrecordsusa.com)