Death, one of the originators of the Death metal genre, lead by Chuck Schuldiner (guitar/ vocals) who unfortunately passed away in 2001, “Leprosy” is the sixth in the series of Death reissues (“Spiritual Healing”, and “Human” are probably my favs) that all include bonus content to go with the original album remastered.

“Leprosy” in the evolution of Death’s music is the bridge between the straight forward zombie blood soaked brutality of the debut “Scream Bloody Gore” and “Spiritual Healing” which incorporated more progressive ideas. Take ‘Forgotten Past’ for example and Chuck’s choice in riffing and tempo which switches between fast to a gallop that Death pretty much invented for the style. Or ‘Pull the Plug’ that again uses riffing, slowed down melodic harmonies between the guitar and bass, and change in drum beats. Title track is classic attack.

A second disc includes ten really rough rehearsals of every song minus the title track, and a third disc includes live songs taken from two different shows that are not multi track recordings and vary in sonic quality. Pretty poor actually. It’s a 7 because as a package disc two and three are really for diehard fans. The remastered album sounds great though.