You must be from another planet or living into a cryogenic prison if you consider yourself a metalhead and never "heard" of DEATH, the group from Florida, which in 1984 decided to change the metal world as we know it. The late Chuck Schuldiner not only delivered seven albums, that each and every one was considered a masterpiece, but was named the godfather of the "Death metal" genre even though if he was always trying to abolish that "title", stating that he was just playing music in a metal band. Almost 11 years after Chuck's passing away, Relapse is offering a massive reissue of every DEATH album and CONTROL DENIED release, with few rumors going on about the release of the second CONTROL DENIED album that Chuck had almost finished...

The first reissue of this deal, regarding DEATH's catalog, is their last one "The Sound of Perseverance" as a 2cd deluxe edition. Except of the original album, we get demos version of almost every song in TSOP, enhanced cover, linear notes from the original cover artist Travis Smith and Shannon Hamm -guitarist of the album-and never seen before photos from that era. There is no reason to explain how good is TSOP, an almost "rushed" album from DEATH since Chuck wanted to move to CONTROL DENIED and Nuclear Blast wanted another one. The demos consist of few tracks with no bass at all ("Spirit Crusher"," Flesh...."and the instrumental masterpiece" Voice Of The Soul") and the rest with "interesting" pre-mastered versions of almost every song in the original album (for a reason "Forgive Is To Suffer" is "absent").

I must admit that the no-bass tracks merely seem like instrumental versions of the original songs, since the changes are quite few to be memorable and they don't really stand out. What stands out are the two demo version of "Bite The Pain", the 1998 and the 1997. In the '98 version we see some backing vocals to be present giving an eerie feeling to the song, some guitar distortion and a very different intro. In the '97 version there is instead a distortion in Chuck's vocals -which gives to the song another dimension and depth- and a bit more guitar heavy orientation (probably production wise). The rest three songs - "A Moment Of Clarity", "Story To Tell" and "Scavenger Of Human Sorrow"- have two demos versions each -excluding "Scavenger..."- do give a good insight of the creative process of the album and a small glimpse of Chuck's musicianship. The diversity in these songs is quite obvious and it gets more obvious while listening to these "raw" versions of them.

Whether or not, you "need" to buy a reissued version of TSOP, if you own the original, is up to you. To be honest, there is no "need" in this matter. The album is a masterpiece, we get few added bonus and an inside look in that era of a band that came to be the one of most influential band in the metal genre. If you don't own "The Sound Of Perseverance" from DEATH, now you got no excuse! There is a Story to Tell...TELL IT (or hear it...)!