On October 22, 1991, DEATH released "Human", the album that dragged death metal into its technical future. Chuck Schuldiner rebuilt his band from scratch, recruiting CYNIC guitarist Paul Masvidal and drummer Sean Reinert alongside fretless bass virtuoso Steve Di Giorgio, and the new lineup turned brutality into architecture. Produced by Scott Burns and Schuldiner at Morrisound, the record opens with the devastating one-two punch of "Flattening of Emotions" and "Suicide Machine", while the instrumental "Cosmic Sea" proved extreme metal could be genuinely cosmic. Lyrically, Schuldiner abandoned gore for philosophy, dissecting mortality, betrayal and the human condition. "Human" became DEATH's best-selling album and a watershed for the entire genre: Rolling Stone later ranked it among the greatest metal albums of all time, and virtually every technical death metal band since owes it a debt. It remains the moment death metal grew a brain without losing its teeth.
