Nothing like a bumper reissue to trigger the cynical impulse, right? After all, few things smack more of cash grab than the re-release of an album that hasn’t even turned 30. Death’s Scream Bloody Gore isn’t even at mid-life crisis age yet. Does it really deserve a two disc deluxe edition?
The answer is yes. Time has been very kind to a record that has been routinely described as the progenitor of the entire death metal genre. And yet it’d be wrong to pigeonhole Scream Bloody Gore as a metal record. It’s a lumbering, lopsided behemoth – a drunken Cthulhu tripping over its own tentacles in a surprisingly gratifying way.
Songs stop and start ad nauseam, and tracks like the singularly inspired Sacrificial and Evil Dead owe as much to punk rock and jazz as they do to more commercial genres. Better still, the bumper second disc is less an assemblage of outtakes then an all-important glimpse into the demonic forces that brought this screaming mess into the world. It’s a peek around a bloodied curtain, one as illuminating as it is disturbing.
Scream Bloody Gore is filthy, fitful, and ferocious. In the words of famous occultist Anton LaVey, “Satan approves.”
BY JOSEPH EARP
