Chuck’s Legacy Has Two Addresses Now
Which Death tribute band is your favorite — Death to All or Left to Die? Either way, it’s pretty cool that Chuck Schuldiner’s legacy lives on in two distinct projects covering two different periods of the band’s history.
Left to Die — featuring original Death guitarist Rick Rozz and bassist Terry Butler alongside Exhumed frontman Matt Harvey and Gruesome drummer Gus Rios — has signed to Relapse Records and announced their debut full-length, Initium Mortis, due July 17. Lead single “Archangel” is streaming now.
What makes Left to Die interesting is their focus on the deeper cuts — the more brutal, pre-Human end of Death’s catalog, the era when the band was still grinding at the intersection of hardcore aggression and proto-death riffing. Death to All tends to celebrate the legacy more broadly; Left to Die plants their flag in the mud of Scream Bloody Gore and Leprosy territory and stays there. Two very different takes on the same lineage.
The lineup alone is a death metal history lesson. Rozz and Butler played on some of the most formative records the genre produced. Matt Harvey’s work with Exhumed and Gruesome proves he understands this world — Gruesome was basically a Spiritual Healing-era Death tribute on its own, so this isn’t a pivot so much as a natural evolution. Gus Rios locks it in behind the kit.
The cover art looks pretty sick. I’ll be checking this out when it drops July 17 — will you?
Source: Relapse Records