Album Reviews
Death - …For the Whole World to See
In 1971, brothers David, Bobby, and Dannis Hackney cooked up Death in their Detroit garage. Little did they know that more than three decades later, their efforts would become the stuff of music lore. Death’s album, set for release thirty-eight years after the band’s birth, is now a must-have for proto-punk enthusiasts. (For the metalhead who is accidentally reading this magazine while using a few pages to wipe up spilled bong water: No, this is not the Floridian band started by the father of death metal, Chuck Schuldiner.) As African-American garage rockers (“punk” wasn’t a musical phylum until years later), the Hackney brothers were ahead of their time. Their music—original and raw with socially conscious lyrics—stands miles apart from the sound of Detroit’s Motown explosion. Funkadelic producer Don Davis recorded …For the Whole World to See in 1974 and captured Death’s hard-groove sound—some of it siphoned from Detroit’s own MC5. Soon Clive Davis, head honcho of Columbia Records from 1967 to 1973, wanted to sign the band, but only if they changed the name. The Hackneys refused, broke up the band, and moved to Vermont (how punk!). Bobby and Dannis would go on to form the reggae band Lambsbread. The story of Death would have ended here, but their anachronistic, punk-ish sound has piqued the interest of record collectors dredging the Internet for rare recordings of a few songs from the band. Death’s bass-heavy “Politicians in My Eyes” grooves with the speed of Bad Brains, but came out years before the oft-cited black punk progenitors. Indie label Drag City now presents a first listen to Death’s visionary album and offers the band’s hyperkinetic, drum-driven freak rock as the perfect catalyst to rock faces in your grandmama’s romper room and kick your cat right in the whiskers.
from Flaunt Magazine, Issue 102 2009
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For Your Perusal:
Read about Death in the NY Times
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