1990's
Spiritual Healing wrapped up a trilogy of
Death LPs delineating the birth of a genre and featuring the childishly provocative splatter-gore cover art of the ever-popular
Ed Repka; artwork that, as the years wear on, has increasingly undermined the revolutionary musical accomplishments contained within all three of the legendary Floridian death metal band's first studio efforts. But, more importantly and accurately,
Spiritual Healing closed the second chapter of
Death's career (the first having consisted of an unusually protracted self-discovery demo period), thus setting the stage for leader
Chuck Schuldiner's imminent creative peak. From a personnel perspective (always an intriguing subplot of any
Death album),
Schuldiner had only recently parted ways with longtime accomplice
Rick Rozz and replaced him with a far more refined and versatile shredder in Atlanta-based guitar prodigy
James Murphy. After initially turning down the position,
Murphy quickly realized his error and relocated to Orlando, where he joined
Schuldiner and the returning
Terry Butler/
Bill Andrews rhythm section in time to begin composing, rehearsing, and recording
Spiritual Healing at old, reliable Morrisound Studios with producer
Scott Burns in the fall of 1989. Released in February of 1990 through Combat Records, the album was met with surprisingly mixed reviews. On the one hand stood the more conservative, extreme metal contingent that resented the album's sacrifice of sheer musical savagery in the name of cleaner production, improved musicianship, and evident songwriting refinements; and, on the other, the more forward-thinking listeners who embraced it for all of the very same reasons. Love them or loathe them, though, brand new
Death standards like "Altering the Future", "Low Life," and the masterful title track (which even contained a brief keyboard part performed by the band's manager) showcased consistently intriguing riff sequences and time changes to go with much more abundant melodic parts and solos traded between
Schuldiner and
Murphy. Much of remaining material was also rife with individual highlights, but, admittedly, some songs did suffer from lingering bouts of sophomoric lyrics and gratuitously violent concepts (see "Living Monstrosity," "Killing Spree"). It's also important to point out that there was still a thrash-derived tone to
Death's guitars -- not to mention thrash-based songwriting elements -- that would finally vanish when the group adopted the thicker sound and lower tunings now seen as the prototypical American death metal sound for their "great leap forward": 1991's seminal
Human album. It's really only in comparison to this history-making achievement and
Schuldiner's subsequent masterpieces that
Spiritual Healing is justifiably diminished, because in every other sense, it's a hell of an album that reflects what was probably
Death's most crucial transition phase, to boot.