Human is the fourth studio album by American
death metal band
Death, released on October 22, 1991, by
Relativity Records. The album marked the beginning of a major stylistic change for Death, being more technically complex and progressive than the band's previous efforts. The lyrics are more introspective when compared to the
gore-based lyrics of Scream Bloody Gore and Leprosy or the social commentary on Spiritual Healing. This new style would continue to evolve on all following Death albums. This is the only album to feature
Cynic members
Paul Masvidal on guitars and
Sean Reinert on drums, both 20 at the time, and the first to feature bassist
Steve DiGiorgio.
Bassist Steve DiGiorgio left after the recording of the album (though he would later return to record Individual Thought Patterns). He was replaced by Scott Carino, who toured with the band in 1991 and 1992. Carino also recorded additional bass overdub on "Cosmic Sea" after a couple of issues were discovered during the mixing stage. The rest of the song (including the bass solo) was recorded by DiGiorgio.
In 2011,
Relapse Records and
Perseverance Holdings Ltd. re-issued the album to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the original release. This edition was remixed by Jim Morris of
Morrisound Recording Studios, includes bonus tracks,[3] and was authorized by Schuldiner intellectual property lawyer
Eric Greif.[4] The reissue of Human was remixed, as
Sony had lost the master tapes of
Scott Burns' original mixes.[5]
Human was released to critical acclaim from music publications[9] and is seen as a pivotal release in the development of the
technical death metal subgenre and on
extreme metal in general. In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine placed the album as the 70th greatest metal album of all time.[10]
Human is a highly influential extreme metal album, according to Jeff Wagner in his 2010 text on progressive metal, Mean Deviation. It is Death's best-selling album, having sold 100,000 copies in the United States by 1995.[11] It was ranked number 82 on the October 2006 issue of Guitar World magazine's list of the greatest 100 guitar albums of all time. The track "Lack of Comprehension" has an accompanying music video, which received airplay on
MTV and helped boost the sales of the album.[12] As of April 2024, the music video has over 8.3 million views of
YouTube.[13]
As of 2008, Human had sold 95,000 copies with the U.S., according to Soundscan.[3]
The band paid homage in the liner notes to
Atheist bassist
Roger Patterson, who was killed in a car accident in February 1991.
The band's logo presents a change; compared to the logo on the three preceding albums, it loses the drops of blood that flow downwards and the spider web on the letter "D".
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