After the rather primitive ‘Scream Bloody Gore’ Chuck Schuldiner and his band came up with an album that had the first glimpse of what Chuck was capable of. The huge amount of demos and his first album were pretty decent death metal, but are in no way close to what he would achieve later. Still, ‘Leprosy’ isn’t of the same high quality as ‘Symbolic’ for instance, which is for me the ultimate Death record. Yet, its intent is much more controlled, at least it seems this way, and sophisticated. Also in the lyrical content Chuck was on his way to the more mature kind of writing like he did on his future albums.

The most common complaint about ‘Leprosy’ is that the line-up wasn’t really impressive, and in all respect to the musicians involved, this might have been the weakest line-up Death has ever seen. Rick Rozz’ style of playing was in no way comparable to Chuck’s and his parts in the music are therefore rather uninteresting so Chuck had to pull the trigger on basically his own this time. It was absolutely this record that promised a great future for Death, listen to a song like ‘Pull The Plug’ and you’ll know, a true classic.