Chuck Schuldiner: Biography

Future legend Chuck Schuldiner was born in 1967 in a family of teachers. At birth, he received the name Charles. Chuck - this is his pseudonym, which was initially in the course of his friends, and later entrenched behind the frontman in the years of Death.

Childhood

Music has become the element that Chuck Schuldiner got carried away from the earliest years. The first guitar he had appeared only in the tenth year of his life. First, Chuck studied on a classical instrument. However, it was immediately discarded when parents bought an electric guitar. The future musician learned to play during free time from school. Even in his teens he showed leadership qualities, trying to collect his first bands.

Chuck's musical tastes were formed under the influence of the then emerging British wave of heavy metal, as well as the first thrash metal bands. His idols were Iron Maiden, as well as Venom. The first album that Chuck bought was Destroyer recorded by Kiss.

In addition, the young man was fond of other genres: classical academic music and jazz. This interest was imparted to him by his mother. Such a palette of flavors will later play a role in the composer's work of the founder of Death.

Passion for music, which Chuck Schuldiner experienced, did not contribute to interest in learning, even though the teenager was an apt pupil. At school, he was attracted by microscopes and everything related to science. Later, in 1995, in an interview, he admitted that if he had not started playing the guitar, he would have become a veterinarian or a cook.

Mantas and the first demo

In 1983, the sixteen-year-old Chuck Schuldiner founded his first group. It was called Mantas. It was the pseudonym of the guitarist of the British band Venom. The songs of this collective became the first repertoire, which Chuck played with friends. Almost immediately the young guys began to write and their own material.

Under the signboard of Mantas, in the new 1984, there was a single demo record called Death by Metal. It was a hard material that equaled the new band with the cult Possessed, which at that time played in the clubs of San Francisco. However, in Florida, where Mantas started, such music did not gain popularity.

Chuck Schuldiner himself recalled that they looked down on the group and with contempt. The reason for this was poor recording quality. Since the musicians did not have a contract with the label, they could not be recorded in the studio either. Because of this, the group was agitated by conflicts, and in the end it disintegrated. This happened in late 1984.

However, Chuck did not give up and created a new group, which was shortly called Death, that is, "Death." The first demo released by the band was called Reign of Terror. Everything was recorded in a few hours in a music store, or rather, in his office.

In the book Death Metal Music: The Passion and Politics of a Subculture, which was released in 2003, twenty years later, the demo Reign of Terror was called "one of the pillars of the genre." This will be confirmed by any fan of this music.

The debut album

However, until this recognition was still far away. Chuck had to work a few more years to get the opportunity to record a real album. The next demo recording of Mutilation was noticed by the agents of the label Combat Records.

The group was offered a contract, which was signed by Chuck Schuldiner. Reviews about the new album, released in 1987, were enthusiastic. It was music that no one had ever played before. Fast tempo, interesting melody, distortion, and also growl (roar) of Schuldiner - all this became signs of a new genre. Still no one played so brutally, even Slayer, which then were considered the most "heavy".

However, revolutionary was not only in music. A distinctive feature of the group were her texts and images. The songs were dedicated to the dead, diseases and all that is related to the afterlife. Actually, the name Death symbolized this theme as well as possible.

Time has shown that the debut album Scream Bloody Gore became a real cult for the then young people. Songs such as Evil Dead and Mutilation have turned into hymns of a new movement. Very soon there were similar groups that copied Chuck's style. Already in the 90s there was the term death metal, which began to describe this genre of music. The name was taken in honor of the Schuldiner group, where he was the only permanent participant throughout the years.

Leprosy and Spiritual Healing

Very soon the concert grounds of America learned what Death is. Chuck Schuldiner immediately wrote new songs for his performances. Among them was the hit of the band Pull the Plug. This song became a permanent number in the set-lists of the band until its breakup.

The new material was recorded in a studio in Tampa in 1988. He was like a debut and roared in the underground with the same success. The name Leprosy translates as "lepra". It is a medieval disease, which struck the skin of a person with deadly ulcers. On the cover of the plate was a victim of this misfortune, dressed in a turban. The original Death covers have become another distinctive feature of the band.

On the third album Spiritual Healing, released in 1990, the songs became longer and more complex in structure, although the sound remained the same. Chuck diligently sought a new format for his offspring.

Album design and attitude to religion

Among other things, Chuck came up with the Death logo. It was an inscription in Latin, which also contained a braid and a skull. Both of these symbols were associated with death, and such a metaphor was quite understandable. Another sign in the logo is the letter t, represented in the form of an inverted cross. As you know, it was a symbol of Satanists.

When an angry religious community and fans drew attention to this, Chuck removed the cross from the logo. The musician himself explained his action by the fact that he absolutely did not want to associate with the Satanists. According to him, faith in God or her absence is all too personal a matter for each individual, so that this can be touched on in works and songs. And indeed, in Death texts there are no references to religion, let alone attempts to insult someone.

In general, the image of the metalworkers in the society was erroneous, as Chuck Schuldiner believed. The biography of the musician will say best of all the rest - it was a man with the most good-natured and bright character. To him, the anger and other shortcomings that many associates attributed to him because of his music were alien to him.

Composer Evolution

1991. The fourth Human album was the turn Chuck Schuldiner sought. Gamma on this record has changed a lot. Music received elements of jazz. The lyrics changed dramatically from death to inner human emotions and conflicts with the surrounding world. It was a poetics of a completely new, adult level. This trend continued in 1993, when the album "Individual Thought Patterns" was released.

Symbolic

The sixth album by the majority of fans and music journalists is considered the best in the discography of Chuck. Every note of the music parties here has its own mood. The sound from the furious and the basement has changed to a deeper and softer. Simple melodies were replaced by a multi-tiered compositional structure. It was 1995 year. It seemed that Death has nowhere to develop, so unique was the work done by Chuck on the album.

The lyric tangle of the record is complicated and ambiguous. The title song tells of the loss of human innocence. 1,000 Eyes talks about the persecution mania. Lyrics have a universal meaning, each listener could understand them in their own way. This is how Chuck Schuldiner explained his poetic world. Quotations from his interview were snatched up by numerous magazines that tried to get the musician the true meaning of his songs.

The composition of Misanthrope touches upon the theme of extraterrestrial civilizations. Chuck himself believed that they existed, as he spoke in one of the conversations with Czech reporters. Like many children of his generation, he at this age could not take his eyes off the fantastic films. However, his favorite film was the picture "The Wizard of Oz".

The Sound of Perseverance

The swan song Death appeared in 1998. Album The Sound of Perseverance became the most technically difficult for the entire discography. The guitar of Chuck Schuldiner could repeatedly change the pace and melody for one song. This music had little in common with the debut songs Death.

A real diamond was the instrumental composition of Voice of Soul, which many fans consider to be the zenith of the musician's creativity. A bonus for the album was a cover of the song Judas Priset "Painkiller". Schuldiner paid tribute to the legendary band, in an amazing and unusual way, performing the roles of Rob Halford.

Disease

In 1999, Chuck had unnatural pain in the nape of the neck. At first the musician turned to the therapist. He carried out the necessary tests and found no pinching of the nerve, which was initially thought to be the cause of pain. It became clear that the matter was more serious.

Magnetic resonance imaging showed that Chuck had a brain tumor. Radiotherapy courses were urgently scheduled. Upon their completion, the doctors stated that the tumor safely died out. In January 2000, Chuck was subjected to an additional operation, during which the remains of malignant tissue were excised. It seemed that everything was over, and the musician returned to his usual activities.

"The fragile art of being"

Back in 1996, a new group, which was founded by Chuck Schuldiner. The growth of his compositional skills led him to the idea that Death frames are too narrow for his new idea. Therefore, he assembled a new line-up of musicians, with whom he recorded an album even more different from his past work.

The collective was named Control Denied, and the record was The Fragile Art of Existence. It was released in 1999. Music Control Denied was very different from Death. It was a logical continuation of the movement that began on Symbolic.

It was progressive metal with numerous references to other genres, broken rhythm and tempo. Schuldiner appeared on the record only as a guitarist and main composer. To the microphone stood his friend Tim Aimar, who performed his games in a clean voice, which also was not inherent in Death.

Death

However, this was the last album, which was recorded by Chuck Schuldiner. Photo of the musician stopped appearing in the press, he did not leave the house. In the spring of 2001, headaches resumed, and doctors reported that the cancer had returned. The Chuck family was depleted financially due to recent operations. The fans began to collect money quickly, but it was too late.

Because of the powerful medicines, the musician's body was fatally weakened, his immunity was seriously affected. When he fell ill with pneumonia in the fall, his health simply could not stand such a blow. Chuck passed away on December 15 for a couple of weeks before the new year 2002.

Life after death

The musician's legacy, primarily within the Death group, is of enormous importance today, after just over a decade. Death metal continues to evolve, many innovative ideas of the composer, embodied in the latest albums, have become a breeding ground for new bands. Now this phenomenon has formed into new genres - technical death metal, brutal death metal, jazz death metal, etc.

For thousands of musicians and millions of fans, Chuck Schuldiner became a cult figure. His short but productive life remains an object of interest for music lovers and researchers.

Of course, the Death band ceased to exist with the death of Chuck. However, numerous musicians, in different years collaborating with Schuldiner, periodically gather together at retrospective concerts. Money from these events goes to the accounts of a special fund, which was founded by the Chuck family to help cancer patients.