LEFT TO DIE, the project reuniting former DEATH guitarist Rick Rozz and bassist Terry Butler, have released a new single, "Legion Of Doom," ahead of their debut full-length album, "Initium Mortis," due July 17 via Relapse Records on CD, vinyl, cassette and digital formats.
Rounding out the band are Matt Harvey, known for his work in EXHUMED and GRUESOME, and drummer Gus Rio. Rather than functioning as a standard new death metal act, LEFT TO DIE exists to give proper studio treatment to some of the earliest music in the DEATH lineage — reworking tracks from the "Scream Bloody Gore" and "Leprosy" era, as well as material from Rozz and Butler's pre-DEATH band Mantas, much of which has circulated among fans for decades only as rough, low-fidelity demo recordings.
Butler didn't hold back describing the new single: "'Legion Of Doom' is heavy as hell. One of the best and earliest knuckle-dragging riffs out there." The comment underscores the band's mission — not to reinvent this material, but to finally give it the sonic weight it was always meant to carry, recorded with modern studio resources rather than a cassette four-track.
For longtime death metal fans, the appeal is obvious. Rozz and Butler were present at the genre's ground floor, playing alongside Chuck Schuldiner as DEATH transformed from a scrappy Florida demo band into one of extreme metal's most influential acts. LEFT TO DIE offers a rare chance to hear that formative songwriting rendered with the clarity modern death metal fans expect, without sanding down the primitive, "knuckle-dragging" character that made it worth preserving in the first place.
The band has been active on the touring circuit internationally since 2023, building anticipation for this material well before a studio release was locked in. With "Initium Mortis" arriving July 17, LEFT TO DIE is poised to give death metal historians and diehards alike a definitive studio document of some of the genre's earliest riffs — arriving more than four decades after they were first scrawled onto a rehearsal tape in Florida.