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Can you talk a little bit about your experience with Chucks' music?
My personal
experience, when I was about a freshman in high school which was when
I started branching out and seeking the heavier music other than
Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Metallica. Obviously one of the first
bands on a lot of people journey to that is Death, because Death was
doing almost the same thing but they had way better guitar tone and
way better songs. I started off on Sound of Perseverance. I had
listened to a lot of death metal but nothing really quite struck me.
There were no players in death metal who were like Tony Iommi or Jimi
Hendrix to the point that they embodied there music and they had a
vision and they weren't going to stop at anything to realize it. So
Chuck was the first death metal guitarist/vocalist that I really
identified with because I always thought death metal could be so much
more. Its funny but the person who technically invented death metal
and that was his vision (to embody his music and have a unique sound)
and it ended up being a cookie cutter kind of thing. Anyone that has
listened to Death and has any inkling for anything heavy is blown
away the first time. From playing guitar, all the music that I knew I
could already play. That was the first album that was like “Oh my
god, How do you play this and sing at the same time?” It really
pushed me and actually Death led me to dropping out of high school. I
started ditching class around sophomore year thinking “I don't care
about what I'm learning at school, I'd rather have my mom drop me off
at school in the morning then I'll ditch and walk back home so I can
learn Sound of Perseverance in its entirety” I just went from
there. I learned all the songs on Sound of Perseverance, both guitar
parts, the bass parts, I can play some of the drum parts now but that
was a more recent development. It really was my first time immersing
myself. I really wanted to play it. That was pretty much my
introduction to them, being in awe of the Sound of Perseverance album
and using it as a stepping stone to drive me forward in my music and
to find an obsession within it that I just channel and learn from. I
like learning scales and stuff like that but even with the scale we
know its all about how you play it and that's what Chuck had. Its
like Hunter Thompson used to do, he would type out the books of his
favorite authors so that he could better understand where they were
coming from to see it through their eyes as they were writing. Chuck
was the first guitarist I really wanted to do that with and immerse
myself within his world by learning his riffs and everything he
definitely had a great impact and kept his integrity for his whole
career and if anything bad ever happened or not according to plan he
was always very apologetic and very straightforward about everything.
Chuck rules! (Laughs)
How do you think Chuck evolved in
his lyric writing over the course of his career?
From what I've
seen in the albums and everything, Scream Bloody Gore was awesome in
that it tried to do the whole horror thing with the death metal.
Zombie Ritual has some of my favorite lyrics of all time “Drink
from the goblet/the goblet of gore/taste the zombies drug/you'll be
screaming for more” He had such a way with words even if it was in
such a macabre style and filled with horror it still showed he had a
way with words and it made it so much more interesting and painted a
picture with words. Looking at it as a 'goblet of gore' and then
equivocating that to a 'zombies drug' that's the coolest thing ever!
He wanted to take it more to a personal level and he definitely did.
I don't know if their was a message he was trying to send a nessage
but he definitely had deep feelings and views on a lot of things.
Spiritual Healing was where he definitely started putting that in.
Forgive me for my ignorance, I don't have the complete chronology
memorized but as he drove forward with the albums towards the later
80s and early 90s it started going more into what he saw within the
world. You can either sit there and complain and pout about all the
problems in the world that you see and all the bad stuff you've
experienced and you can let it hold you down. But what I think Chuck
did was use that as a catalyst to do what he needed to do and be that
example with his music and with the later albums. I love all Death
lyrics but especially those on the later albums. Like on “The
Philosopher” where he says “The philosopher, you know so much
about nothing at all” it's true! No matter what you hypothesize
about if you try to apply it everywhere it doesn't work. What do you
really know, why are you trying to indoctrinate everyone? Or “You
tell me how I'm supposed to be you question your own sexuality” he
saw the other side on everything. For every personality within the
world that had a negative impact he saw the reflection from the other
side and where it was coming for and put that information out there
within the song. Especially on songs like Secret Face. I imagine it
was all very personal as well but it's very applicable to a lot of
different aspects of our lives. I think that's why he was so great
lyrically because he was conveying his personal problems but they
could be applied to everyone and you can learn from it to. There's
not that many bands that you can say that about. It's great that over
time even the horror stuff drove it into something that is changing
lives constantly.
The power that he had is
significant.
How do you think his guitar playing
over the course of his career?
Early on so with
Scream Bloody Gore there was just that beginning lead and it didn't
go far beyond that. Yet even if it was just a simple lead he it was
often with a scale that was not often utilized within metal. It was
kind of an eastern or Indian sounding scale, with an almost chromatic
jazz shape on it then he goes straight into the heavy stuff. He
defined the guitar tone on that. His tone was as much a part of his
playing as the playing himself. I don't think that their was anything
about his guitar tone that wasn't necessary. It was necessary for his
style of playing. It wasn't like he had a huge mid boosted guitar
sound because that was the sound he wanted but because it was the
sound he needed. The thing for the earlier albums he would do one
part with leads and then he would go in and do rhythm for a while and
then he'd do another part that was lead driven. Somewhere around the
middle he started gluing it together and doing the rhythms and the
leads at the same time which was monumental for the metal world
because so many bands were just doing basic rhythm, chords on the
left side leads on the right side whereas how he was arranging the
rhythms were leads too. To the point that even if he and the other
guitar player were going to hit the same note they were going to be
an octave apart. It was just this really cool to see how he wrote for
two guitars. It was eventually bringing that all in and came together
perfectly. There's not a metal band today that Chucks footprint isn't
in. All metalcore it's all just making a method out of Chucks style.
At the end of it especially with Sound of Perseverance that was
immaculate. The way everything worked together and the content of
every song was perfect and you could tell that his whole life was
amounting to that album. Its very weird to think that he almost knew
that that was his last mark on society so that really pushed him. Not
to say you can't write a really great album without dying from
cancer. But definitely he did what he was supposed to do at the very
end and thats something that you don't hear in other albums. Its
really hard to reach that state without that adversity, that living
doom over your head. You can write heavy music and lyrics but a great
musician that has that deadline on their life they are always going
to do something like that. Its almost like Reincarnations album after
the singers daughter died. That's a great Reincarnation album. Having
that last push and knowing it was the last Death album and knowing
that he had to amount everything that Death ever was and could be
into that album and I think that was the defining point for Sound of
Perseverance that made it it the staple it is in every metal
collection.
So I recently got the chance to call up my friend Peter Tomis of Bloodmoon to see what he said about the great Chuck Schuldiner. What follows is a transcription of the interview. Be sure to check Bloodmoon out on Facebook!
How do you think Chucks growling
style evolved over the course of his career?
I think he had a
thing where he had a voice for different albums. Every album had a
slightly different voice. On the first album he was doing more of the
screams, lower and guttural I wouldn't even call them growls
technically. It was just like harsh raspy yelling. Its funny because
just like his guitar it evolved. Like on Individual
Thought Patterns he was still doing that same style as on Scream
Bloody Gore with those harsh yells but with some more variation. I
love that old style that Chuck style. Every single style that he ever
utilized had a place. To be a vocalist whose voice transforms over
time with a slightly different vocal style for each album while still
retaining the interest of your fans. That's because it was all about
the song, it was all about complimenting the music. I don't know his
exact writing process but I can't imagine he wrote the lyrics before
the song. His vocal style was very tied in with the riffs and little
pocket rhythms within the song. It made it so much more! It's easier
to sing within those spots while you're playing guitar. But when you
find the perfect spots like he did, to compliment his songs thats
where any vocal style is giong to work as long as you know your voice
within that range. With every vocal style Chuck did he knew his voice
really well. Then what he did with Death Live in LA to go back and do
a show where he played a spanning work of his material and he's still
pulling off the old vocals exactly as he was fifteen years before.
That's awesome for me. It pretty much just slowly went from low mids
to high mids and then into treble until Sound of Perseverance where
he was almost wholly treble and his voice was just... no one can do
it. No one will ever replicate it. Me and a friend from high school
said it's cool when a band can do a Death cover. If a band can get a
good sound on it. Yet I never want to hear it because the vocals will
never be there. You can have all of the same musicians minus Chuck
and do it, even if you have someone that had it down perfectly, what
a lot of people don't get is that its not the sound! It's hard
because the market is so saturated but a lot of people view it just
as 'who cares about the man behind the vocals, I can pull of this
vocal style.' It's the sum of all the parts that made Chuck who he
was. It was the genuine person, his whole mind tied in with his vocal
style, the raw emotion all the lyrics were so powerful he had to have
a powerful vocal delivery and he consistently did that album to
album. He provided a pallet of vocal forms. He covered every style of
metal vocals in his own way. You could imagine any metal recording
with Chucks take on the vocal and it would work and you can't really
say that for many other metal vocalists. He was something else to say
the least.
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