A Brief Analysis of SYMBOLIC by DEATH - METAL MASTERPIECES 

Death is what got me into Death Metal, especially this Album.

Just researching a Solar A2.6C to play Death on and I need a D standard guitar (I love Chuck’s Stealth but I don’t like how X types feel to me and just love strat shapes) and I came back to RU-vid looking for Death content and a new Varvis video dropped. Not only that, more Death/Schuldiner deep dives- Symbolic no less! Love it.

New death video💪 Love these types of videos. Keep em coming! These videos have helped my writing tremendously. Thanks so much!🤘

The song that got me into death metal 🤘

What a fantastic interpretation, every lyric and every note analysed. Great job dude

Setup is looking CRISP man

Steve, Chuck and Gene is THE dream team. You should make a video about Control Denied, it's really interesting how Control Denied and last Death album are interconnected.

I appreciate the subject matter. I have had these types of reflections a lot in the last few years. Its easy to fall into the trap of nostalgia and getting fixated on reliving your childhood, but its also easy to fall into the trap of belittling what you grew up with and holding a false sense of maturity that you are "above all that stuff". The former is being stuck in childhood and the latter is being an eternal teenager. The best of both worlds is appreciating the value that pivotal moments had while maintaining some distance from them. Not trying to recreate that high of innocence, nor devaluing these moments as stupid or meaningless. Good video. Also I didn't really think of Symbolic as Melodic Death, but it really is. Amazing record regardless.

Just recently I have been listening to symbolic the most out of anything. Probably at least 3-4 times a day these past couple days.

if you stop to think, this song is so but so symbolic that, death metal and fast riffs dosen't even care is just so sad to remember the innoncence of past, i love this lyrics so MUCH

Hell ŸÀAAAAAAAAA !!!!! What a great band man !!!!!!!! Bud i saw a valvestate in calgary on kijiji just a few days ago🤟🤟🤟🤟

Without Judgement, Symbolic, and Crystal Mountain are some of the greatest metal songs. Period.

Thank you for this series on Death, especially the songs from Symbolic. These are excellent analyses/explanations of Chucks reasoning. It's rare to have the talent and ability to analyze and infer meaning in music from the theoretical level ( as in rudiments like notes, timing, etc) to the lyrical level.

3:40 "Crystal Mountain Clear" you should say.

NEW VID HYPE

I absolutely love your break down of this song. Death is one of my favorite bands. I subbed!

Not only one of the greatest metal albums of all time but one of the greatest pieces of music ever recorded. Everything every song has the perfect mix of heaviness, melody, groove and nothing feels out of place it all melds together so well

this song introduced me to a style of metal music i had never heard before, chuck's music is kinda the sound of that entire era for me, very nostalgia inducing and emotive (reeks of the 90s). Plus this song talks about the death of good things we admired as kids, makes it one of the most unique lyrics in death metal music i had heard. It was more about philosophy rather than painting a violent/scary picture like most other death metal bands did.

Great vid, dude.. I wish my music was big enough to be dissected lol.. I think a lot of people don’t understand the detail us metal musicians put into our music…. As far as Death goes.. I was a huge fan of Chuck, especially the “prog era” (Human-TSOP).. I think the only weakness Chuck had as a writer, was how his song structures 99% of the time, were all the same, which I think made the songs a tad predictable.. Fortunately, his riffing was 11/10 level, so it never really brought any of his songs down…. Also, regarding Gene.. My band covered “1,000 Eyes” from Symbolic, and it was not easy.. In fact, I had to change a lot of what Gene did because he has such a chaotic controlled style of playing.. His fills are very wild, and almost don’t seem to have any rhyme or reason lol.. And of course, I don’t use double rides, so it was hard to imitate those parts as well.. “1,000 Eyes” is definitely my favorite track off of Symbolic

Hell yeah dude. This is well timed for me since I’m on an OSDM kick after a long break from it

Great video man, love the breakdown of everything and how you tie it all together. My friend in my masters econ program in 2015 lent me his Symbolic CD. He was a guitar player that also didn't really like harsh vocals, but loved tech death style instrumentals like Blotted Science. Bands like Trivium, Periphery, Tesseract, etc. had gotten me to appreciate the mix of harsh and cleans, but death/black/extreme metal vocals were always a bit too much. I remember trying to listen to bands like Fallujah or NeO and just feeling overwhelmed even with the instrumentals too lmao. Listening to Symbolic though, Chuck's vocals were obviously pretty grating, but their delivery and the music behind them (the groove of it as you pointed out) is when things started to click. Eventually bands like Fallujah, NeO, RoN, Beyond Creation, Slugdge, Vektor, Revocation, and many more became some of my favorites haha. Death was really big in my musical journey and reinforced the idea to keep an open mind to stuff you don't like at first listen.

Thank you for this video! A great analysis of what is probably my favorite song of all time.

Dude Were has your channel been hiding? So cool!

just saw Death to All in Berkley play this. fantastic show

Now I am waiting for the Onset of Putrefaction deep dive

Love the song. Love the album. It's a big underrated in the Death discography.

Great vid. Keep it up

I saw death 95 Symbolic tour London. One the best gigs ever. Fav band🤘

"Do you remember when, things seemed so eternal? Heroes were so real... Their magic frozen in time!" Dude this is awesome. Keep making some of the best metal comment on RU-vid!

What a profound and professional analysis, dude! I studied philology and profiled in west European poetry of early XX century. What an excellent reading of Schuldiner. Metal started for me with DEATH “HUMAN” and Chuck @Co istayed most influential and symbolic group of musicians till now in spite of immense diversity of tech death metal today. Bravo, I am your fan.

Awesome insight, man!

This is a timeless classic. Good analysis.

Thanks for heartwork mention

Back in the old days when God was a boy and dinosaurs ruled the earth, I frequented the local music shops, perusing the discount and used CD's. One fateful day, at a Wherehouse Music in southern California, 16 year old me picked Death's Symbolic album out of "WTF is this shit?" bin at the store with all of the other sort of non-mainstream stuff that didn't sell. I believe the copy was still new, and I paid a whole $1.99 for it because the cover looked cool. The same week I stumbled upon Suffocation's Effigy of the Forgotten, and hence my metal horizons finally started to expand from the thrash/groove that I was so accustomed to at the time.

Best metal album fr

16:39 There is no such thing as a flattened 4th interval.Its called a major third it is the defining note of a major chord.

i dont know if you talked about it in the video but it would be cool if you made a video about deaths album covers. i saw the sketch that chuck made for symbolic but dont understand what the eye and the paths represent

🤘🏻❤

I'm in my late 40's. Death is my absolute favorite band. Chuck was a revolutionary writer. His lyrics are extremely deep on every song he wrote. 🤘 Edit: Do the song (See Through Dreams) by Death. It's fantastic how he put it together.

This album wouldn't be it without Hoglan. The chorus double bass does it

I love Death, but the lyrics on some of his albums are pure, pseudo-philosophical wankery.

Someone made a synth wave cover album of Symbolic and it’s the greatest Halloween album ever