Death (metal band)

Death was an American death metal band founded in 1983. The band's founder, Chuck Schuldiner, is considered a "pioneering death metal vocalist/guitarist." The band split up after Schuldiner died of brain cancer in 2001.
Death is considered one of the most influential groups in death metal. The band's debut, Scream Bloody Gore, has been described as "death metal's first archetypal document".One music biographer has referred to Schuldiner as the "Father of Death Metal" while another has claimed that Schuldiner is "readily acknowledged as the true founder of the U.S. death metal scene". Music biographer Garry Sharpe-Young considers Death "a genre breaking band...centred upon frontman Chuck Schuldiner" and that the band "would become one of the prime instigators of the death metal movement".
However, Schuldiner dismissed such attributions by stating, in an interview with Metal-Rules.com, "I don’t think I should take the credits for this death metal stuff. I’m just a guy from a band, and I think Death is a metal band".
As of 2008, Death have sold over 2 million albums worldwide, with over 500,000 copies sold by December 2009 in the US alone (excluding the numerous sales before the SoundScan era) making them one of the top-selling death metal bands.