Death - Leprosy

Albums I like a lot: Part X

(Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on December 8th 2021)

Now, in a rather anticlimactic fashion, I’m going to spoil the verdict of this review right off the bat: Death’s Leprosy is the greatest metal album of all time, full stop. While I could just refuse to elaborate further and leave it as is, it wouldn’t be much of a review. Rather, I’m going to start gushing about how good this album is, and its importance to my journey as a metal fan.

Instead of boring you with details about Death’s history (death metal pioneers, tech and prog innovators, yadda yadda), I’m going to bore you with how I got into them. A few years ago, I used to often go on car rides with my cousin, who was big into metal and always had music playing whenever he was driving. While most of it was heavy alternative music, there were a handful of extreme metal bands that, while admittedly surface level, made an impression on me. Among said bands was Death, more specifically their last two albums, Symbolic and The Sound of Perseverance (because apparently the production on the early stuff was bad). Following that, I immediately started a deep dive in their discography, which inevitably led me to the topic of this review, an album that has just refused to leave my head ever since I first listened to it.

They say first impressions are the most important, and Leprosy makes an extremely strong one right from the get-go. It sounds sick, but not in a blood-caked Severed Survival sense, it’s more like a miasma hovering over the music itself. The recording is steeped in this impenetrable atmosphere despite that not being the music’s main focus. The guitars have this satisfying crunch to them that’s nicely supplemented by the bass plonking away underneath, and the drums are just relentless. All that is supported by a grimy, but audible, mix that lets all the instruments be heard at all times.

I would be remiss not to bring up Chuck’s vocal performance. While the man is primarily known for being a guitar god (more on that later), his vocal performance on the earlier albums is also worth discussing. His ghoulish mid-range growl has been one of the defining characteristics of the band’s early output. It was arguably one of the most important ingredients to the aforementioned atmosphere, along with the lyrics. While they might seem passée by today’s standards, they were quite influential to how most death metal bands that followed approached lyrics. Death, disease and violence were the themes that defined an entire genre, and Death in particular managed to pen lyrics that, despite their inherent brutishness, were still quite well put together and catchy. There’s not a single chorus here that misses, seriously.

While all those characteristics do play a great part in why the album is as perfect as it is, the main thing in a music review is, well, the music. Death has always been known for changing between albums, and this one is no different. Leprosy was a step away from the thrashier flavours of Scream Bloody Gore and was basically one of the first “pure” death metal albums. It’s chock full of blistering and crushing riffs, all of which make it a great challenge to pick a single favourite track, though there are a few that by some miracle stand above the rest. The gnarly title track immediately sets the stage with its introduction and headbangable rhythms, and from that point forward the album just doesn’t let up. The songs are just raw and primal, and that can be felt in the sheer ugliness of songs like the groovy “Born Dead'' and the almost-doom “Pull the Plug”, the latter of which might just be the best song they’ve ever penned. It’s genuinely stunning how much awesomeness they managed to cram into every single second of this album, you have to listen to it in order to believe it.

Like I said at the beginning, Leprosy is the greatest metal album of all time. It serves as a landmark and a prime example of what the genre can be, and it hasn’t aged a bit since the day I first listened to it. Not only that, but the album has proven to be timeless, and the passage of time has been extremely kind to it. I implore you to listen to this album if you somehow haven’t done so already, it’s not just essential metal listening, but essential music listening.

Highlights: Yes.

Rating: 100%