Published on Dec 7, 1999
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re Chuck Schuldiner. You’ve been
part of Death, one of the genre’s leading death/thrash metal bands,
for some time now. And while you’re proud of your accomplishments,
you feel like there’s something more you want to accomplish with
your music.
Enter Schuldiner’s side project, Control Denied – a band whose
brilliant work on their debut album
The Fragile Art Of Existence might sadly be overlooked by
the health problems that Schuldiner has faced over the course of
1999. (Last I heard from my friends at Nuclear Blast, he’s still
recovering, but seems to be getting the upper hand. Our best wishes
go out to Chuck.)
For this project, Schuldiner steps away from the microphones and
allows Tim Aymar to handle the chores of being lead throat. With
all due respect to Schuldiner, this turns out to be a wise move.
While he is a competent vocalist in his own regard, allowing
someone else to front the band does two things. First, it ensures
that Control Denied will have a different overall sound than Death.
Second, it frees Schuldiner up to do one thing: shred.
Control Denied tries not to follow Death’s footsteps too closely
– a challenge seeing three-fifths of the band are also members of
Death. The playing has the precision of a Swiss watch, but they
show that true power doesn’t necessarily have to come from playing
a song at a beat faster than a hummingbird’s pulse rate. Indeed,
there’s a fine balance between fast and slow tempos throughout
The Fragile Art Of Existence – even within the constraints
of the same song, and it all sounds natural.
If you had to compare this group to someone else on the market,
maybe they’d be kin to Queensryche running on higher octane fuel.
Tracks like “Consumed,” “Expect The Unexpected,” “What If…?” and
the nine-minute title track all put the listener through an
emotional wringer. The two-guitar work of Schuldiner and Shannon
Hamm is an effective one-two punch that ties everything together
nicely. Drummer Richard Christy and bassist-about-town Steve
DiGiorgio round out the troops, making their talents blend in with
the overall sound for the common good.
In the end, everything works out well for Control Denied. It’s
easy to get caught up in the complexities of “When The Link Becomes
Missing” or “Breaking The Broken,” and you almost feel sad when the
tracks finally do end. I’ve said about many bands recently that
they could be one of the groups leading the charge for metal when
it makes its next push for commercial popularity. I’ve not been
more sure about a band being in the front line of that charge than
I am about Control Denied.
Schuldiner wanted to create something special with Control
Denied that would succeed on its own merits. With
The Fragile Art Of Existence, Schuldiner can take comfort in
the fact that he succeeded with flying colors.