When Death entered Morrisound Recording in Tampa to track their legendary 1991 album Human, no one could have predicted that one of its instrumental "Cosmic Sea" would be written on the fly. But as Paul Masvidal recalls in a recent interview with Guitar World, that's exactly what happened — and it was all thanks to drummer Sean Reinert's stunning efficiency behind the kit.
"We recorded at Morrisound in Tampa with Scott Burns, and the energy was focused and uplifting," said Masvidal. "Chuck gave us a lot of trust and room to experiment." That openness to creativity was critical, but what truly unlocked new territory was Reinert's performance. "I remember Sean had a whole week to record drums and knocked them out in a day or two, which gave us extra time. That led to writing 'Cosmic Sea' in the studio."
According to Masvidal, "Cosmic Sea" wasn't part of Chuck Schuldiner's original vision for Human, but emerged organically through in-the-moment collaboration. "Steve Di Giorgio and Sean had unique chemistry – they were really committed to playing off each other and operating as an independent rhythm section," Masvidal noted. Their interplay helped shape a sound that was rhythmically complex yet powerfully grounded, pushing the album into progressive territory.
"It was new territory, especially for Chuck's music and for death metal in general," Masvidal said. "It was powerful to witness how they fed off each other, creating this foundation that gave the music its pulse and weight."
While Chuck Schuldiner was Death's visionary, Human owed much of its technical brilliance to the team he assembled. Reinert and Masvidal, both members of the then-rising band Cynic, brought jazz-infused precision and progressive flair to the sessions. Though Cynic had yet to release their own debut, Reinert and Masvidal were already regarded as players far ahead of their time.
The two musicians had been playing together since high school and shared a deep musical intuition that would later shape Cynic's 1993 masterpiece Focus. Reinert's performance on Human not only set a new bar for death metal drumming, but his speed and creativity helped give birth to one of the genre's most enduring instrumental tracks.
Human was a commercial and critical success within the metal underground and has since become a landmark release, cited as one of the most influential death metal albums of all time. It also marked a period of creative transformation for Chuck Schuldiner, who continued to push Death's sound in increasingly progressive and melodic directions on future releases like Individual Thought Patterns and Symbolic.
