Artist: Control Denied
Released: 1999 RATING: 4/5
The Good: Around the time between Death's Symbolic and The Sound of Perseverance releases, Death mainman Chuck Schuldiner began to tire of the musical confines of Death Metal and, long story short, formed Control Denied to expand his horizons. The sole album released by the band, The Fragile Art of Existence, is a strong effort, to be sure. Schuldiner, who only wrote all the lyrics and plays lead guitar for the album, is joined by Death alums Shannon Hamm, Richard Christie, Steve DiGiorgio, and melodic singer Tim Aymar, all of whom display beyond-impressive skills at what they do. Songs like "Consumed", "Breaking the Broken", "Expect the Unexpected", and "When the Link Becomes Missing" exemplify the album's strong points; its melodic and catchy while still retaining quite a bit of heaviness and a lot of expressiveness. In other words, there is no compromise. What you get out of it depends on your attitude, of course. As far as a Power Metal album goes, a direction the music certainly trends towards, it is very unique. Any fans of progressive metal or Death's later albums should listen to this album.
The Bad: I only have a few problems with this otherwise great album. When listening to and reading the lyrics, they are very distinctly written in Chuck's style. Alhough Tim Aymar does a great job singing, I almost don't feel like the vocals are as sincere, so to speak, comming from him as they would (I imagine)have been from Chuck. The songs were written at almost the same time as those for Perseverance (Hell, some of the songs are said to have been taken from The Fragile Art and 'Death-ized' so that they had enough songs to finish the album), and the influence clearly shows. To put it bluntly, Perseverance has the better songs, and with a identical band sound on the two records, The Fragile Art can come off as a derivative, light-weight, late-period Death album. This, however, is not a fair judgment of this truly great work, the last of a true genius. Be open when listening. It will be worth it.
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