Spiritual Healing

about this album

Spiritual Healing is the third album by death metal band Death, released in February 1990. The title comes from the era when faith healer Peter Popoff was exposed on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson by James Randi as a fraud. This was also the first album to incorporate progressive metal elements due to more varied time signatures and longer song lengths. The only album to feature both guitarist James Murphy and bassist Terry Butler and the last to feature drummer Bill Andrews. This is the first of Death's albums to show Schuldiner's lyrics moving away from the gore and horror themes of previous works, focusing instead on themes of society including abortion, genetics, and televangelism, a direction that would be further refined on 1991's Human album. The members of Death stayed in a single motel room at the Safari Inn, near Busch Gardens, for the entire six weeks the album was recorded and mixed, although bassist Terry Butler and drummer Bill Andrews frequently went home as they lived in the Tampa area. New guitarist James Murphy had his first taste of the strange in-humour of the other band members and their manager during all of this time confined to close quarters in the studio and motel. Unlike the previous two efforts by the band, the lyrics are primarily concerned with social issues such as abortion, as opposed to the strictly violence-related content of both Scream Bloody Gore and Leprosy. This was the final Death album cover painted by Ed Repka, following t

tracks

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