Steve DiGiorgio, legendary metal bassist known for his work with Death and Control Denied, recently opened up on the Scars And Guitars podcast about the long-delayed second Control Denied album — the final project from Chuck Schuldiner, the iconic founder of Death and mastermind behind Control Denied.
Tentatively titled When Machine And Man Collide, the album remains unfinished more than two decades after Schuldiner’s death in December 2001 from pontine glioma, a rare form of brain tumor. Despite countless roadblocks, DiGiorgio emphasized that the band has never given up on completing the project in Chuck’s memory.
Chuck began work on the sophomore Control Denied release before his health sharply declined. Original band members – DiGiorgio, vocalist Tim Aymar, guitarist Shannon Hamm, and drummer Richard Christy – announced their intent to complete the album posthumously. However, legal disputes between Schuldiner’s family and Hammerheart Records (later Karmageddon Media) halted the project for years.
Low-quality demo collections titled Zero Tolerance and Zero Tolerance II were later released, but the official second album remained unreleased — a source of frustration and grief for fans and band members alike.
In his interview with Andrew McKaysmith, DiGiorgio explained the current state of the long-awaited album: "We've had the sketches of the songs since [Chuck] was alive. He sent us the rough demos, and you could hear him singing the guidelines on it for Tim to learn how it goes. They're not worthy of releasing, and we wouldn't do that to Chuck, but we have all the blueprints ready when we do it final. It's just — fucking Tim died [in February 2023], and that really stalled it out, after all the other stalling out that's been going on."
DiGiorgio noted that Chuck had considered other vocalists before eventually selecting Aymar: "Some of these guys are just older, [and] they don't think they have the [vocal] range [to pull it off]. It's been tough. So I really don't know. It's been one of the hardest things to complete. But it seems like over the past [24] years, we haven't stopped trying or at least thinking about it. We haven't stopped at all."
When podcast host McKaysmith suggested exploring younger vocalists, DiGiorgio agreed that it might be time to bring in fresh talent: "Yeah. I was talking to someone who's not fully one of us in the inner circle that would make the choice… They go, 'Oh, it would be perfect.' So that kind of motivates me to bring it to the inner circle… the idea of just saying, like, 'Hey, let's just make it a good album,' because we're so far away now from what Chuck was leaving behind…"
While stressing that Chuck’s original vision was becoming harder to preserve with time, DiGiorgio was candid about the shifting nature of the project: "So, yeah, we might look into someone that wasn't considered when Chuck was alive. But I don't know."
DiGiorgio also shared his frustration over decades of speculation, especially during the era when Eric Greif, former Death manager, oversaw Schuldiner’s estate: "I've been answering this question [about a second Control Denied album] for, like I said, 24 years… it was on, it was off, it's on, it's officially over, this guy's in, he's out. So anytime we talk about finishing this album, the answer's gonna be different."
