The Left To Die bassist says he and Rick Rozz never considered involving the original Death vocalist in their Initium Mortis project.
Terry Butler has known Kam Lee for four decades. Asked whether the man who sang on the original recordings might appear on a record built entirely from them, his answer left no room.
The question came from Terry Palamara of “Loud And Proud Italy“. Left To Die‘s debut album Initium Mortis, out July 17 through Relapse Records, consists of newly cut versions of early Death material and songs from Mantas, the band Chuck Schuldiner ran before Death existed. Lee sang and drummed on much of it.
Butler said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “Not at all. There is one trillion percent [certainty that] Kam will not be involved with Left To Die. I mean, I’ve worked with the guy, I’ve known him for 40 years. He’s always toxic. Yes, he’s talented, but he’s too hard to work with. I don’t know. His thought process seems to be not human, actually, sometimes. And, yeah, we can’t work with him. Rick and I will not work with him. And whatever. It is what it is.”
“He did play drums and sing on those [early Mantas and Death] songs, but the best part of those songs on his part is the actual singing. Drums aren’t the greatest, but, hey, that’s what demos are,” Butler added.
And then he closed the subject: “But, yeah, long story short — no, we never even gave it a thought, because we’ve all worked with him in the past, and there’s absolutely no way we’re gonna ever work with him in the future.”
The three of them go back to Massacre, formed in Tampa in 1984. Lee, Rozz, Butler and drummer Bill Andrews made up the lineup that settled in the mid-eighties before Rozz, Andrews and Butler left in 1987 to join Death for Leprosy, leaving Lee to fold the band. It has been reassembled and dismantled repeatedly since, in various combinations and with varying degrees of goodwill.
The last serious rupture came in 2016, when Rozz and Lee announced they were reviving Massacre together. Butler and Andrews blocked it on trademark grounds, and the project ran as Massacre X before becoming Gods Of Death. Lee told Metal Rules the following year that the fight over the name was “disgusting” and “pathetic”, and noted that he and Rozz had by then patched up a long-standing rift of their own.
Butler once said much the same about his current bandmate. In 2017 he accused Rozz and drummer Mike Mazzonetto of destroying Massacre through backstabbing. The two now play together in Left To Die alongside Matt Harvey of Exhumed and drummer Gus Rios.
Lee laid out his own claim on the early catalogue back in 2008, while considering re-recording some of it himself: “Like it or not… I’m as much a part of that history as Chuck was, and I wouldn’t think to do anything to downplay his involvement in these songs. The simple truth is that most of the songs on Mantas/Death‘s Death By Metal demo ’83/’84, Death‘s Reign Of Terror demo ’84 and Death‘s Infernal Death demo ’85 — and many rehearsal tapes released during this time — were both lyrically written be me, and sung by me. Yes, both Chuck and Rick wrote the guitar riffs, but I wrote the drum patterns to these songs and the lyrics to most of these tracks. That’s the simple truth to it!”
He continues to front Massacre and takes over vocals for Benediction on their Latin American tour in November, standing in for Dave Ingram, who stepped back from the band this year on health grounds.
Butler, meanwhile, plays bass in Obituary. Schuldiner started Mantas in Altamonte Springs, Florida in 1984 and died on December 13, 2001 of pontine glioma, a rare brain tumour. His authorised biography, “Born Human: The Life And Music Of Death’s Chuck Schuldiner” by David E. Gehlke, came out through Decibel Books in November last year with cover art by Ed Repka.
