The Sound of Perseverance

The Sound of Perseverance is the seventh and final album by American death metal band Death. The album was released on September 15, 1998 through Nuclear Blast.

The album, in particular, employs a style more akin to progressive metal than the earliest Death releases, although since Human and the albums following it, the band had been developing more toward this style. The average song length on this album is around six minutes. Also, it was a breakthrough album for drummer and later radio star Richard Christy, in the tradition of previous drummers like Gene Hoglan and Sean Reinert.

The album features “Voice of the Soul”, an instrumental track that contrasts with every other work of the band in its inclusion of softer guitars and lack of percussion. In an interview done in March 1999, Chuck Schuldiner stated that Voice of the Soul was actually written during the Symbolic sessions. Death has produced only two instrumentals (the other being the considerably heavier “Cosmic Sea” from Human). The album also featured a cover of Judas Priest's “Painkiller”, which shows Schuldiner attempting a different, high-pitched style of death growl more reminiscent of Rob Halford's original vocals and also singing for the first time with a clean voice through the end of the song.

Some of the song names and music on The Sound of Perseverance were originally going to appear on the first Control Denied album. Schuldiner himself denied this in an interview with Metal Maniacs in 1998 by saying that none of his compositions for Control Denied had been used to fill space for a Death album. However, Tim Aymar, in December 2010, confirmed that a few of the Control Denied songs had been, in his words, “‘Deathized’ and recorded on TSOP.” When Death was signed on to Nuclear Blast, Schuldiner agreed to make one last Death album before moving forward with Control Denied.

“Spirit Crusher” was the single from this album. It featured a music video that was shot live.