Fuck that Saturday rule - CHUCK SCHULDINER has died!

Shit. I didn't even know! What a fucking year, eh?

I thought he had started to recover, but cancer got to him. And not that band either.

He'd been sick for a very long time, hadn't he?

He'd been sick for two years. Last summer he started auctioning off all his guitars, test pressings, amps, autographed everything in a desperate attempt to pay his medical bills. One of the experimental treatments he got was actually rather toxic, though it probably prolonged his life a little while complicating his condition. It's a crying shame to lose him, anyhow: his influence on metal is so far-reaching it can hardly be measured.

I have to admit, I always knew the name but never sensed exactly *why* Death was so important and so influential. They never seemed to come up much in such discussions, so can anyone spell out exactly why them and not, say, Celtic Frost?

Here is John Darnielle's explanation, which made me feel the loss even though I don't listen to that kind of music.

And a pretty good explanation it is. I think the thing that is making me scratch my head is that I never got any real sense during the late eighties (and my accompanying more thorough dip into darker metallic waters) about what made Death different from the 'Stygian goreplod,' to borrow from one of C. Eddy's more apt phrases, of the thrash/grindcore/ doom underground of the time. Death was just an afterthought, more known for the name than anything else, and what makes John's explanation a touch curious to me is that on the one hand he sets it up as more of a Death-alone-vs.-false metal battle royale and on the other makes indirect notes that other sources of inspiration had already emerged during the decade, that Death *didn't* emerge out of a vacuum and by no means was all of a sudden the one shining hope. The people I was hanging around with in my late teen days would be more apt to cite folks from Celtic Frost to Napalm Death to dear ol' Metallica, and those were the influences in other bands I heard most in turn. I just don't know, maybe I need to give it all an ear through years of perspective now. I see a good case here being made for Death as a great synthesis of styles, but not as a specific, this-is-it turning point that changed the course of metal completely and solely. In the end, maybe I just hung out with the wrong crowd. ;-)

No question about John being on the money about insurance, of course, but that's another matter...