Control Denied (Death) - Spirit Crusher 1997 Demo (Unreleased)

This unreleased song is found on the 1997 three song "A Moment of Clarity" bootleg of Control Denied demos as track #1 followed by Believe and What If...

Due to this song being on the same rehearsal/recording session as two songs that did eventually make it on the 1999 release of Control Denied's The Fragile Art of Existence, some believe that may have been one of the songs originally created for Control Denied before shifting over to Death's 1998 The Sound of Perseverance.

In an interview with Scream Magazine in October 1999, Chuck Schuldiner implied that some Control Denied songs were used for The Sound of Perseverance, when he stated that The Fragile Art of Existence "contains a lot of music I didn't have in mind originally. Most of the material was completed in 1996-97."

Also, Tim Aymar, in December 2010, confirmed that a few of the Control Denied songs had been, in his words, "'Deathized' and recorded on The Sound of Perseverance."

The other two songs on this demo, Believe and What If... can be found on the 2010 Relapse Record's deluxe reissue of The Fragile Art of Existence, as track numbers 6 and 7 contained on disc 2.

Unfortunately this version of Spirit Crusher cannot be found on the comprehensive 3 disc reissue of 'The Fragile Art of Existence', nor on 'The Sound of Perseverance' 3 disc reissue which contain multiple virtually the complete demo and rehearsal recordings of those two albums, which makes this version still to this day a unique unreleased demo track.

My only guess as to why this track isn't found on the 3 disc reissue of the Sound of Perseverance, which is essentially a complete collection of demos/rehearsals for that album, is possibly due to the track hiding on a Control Denied rehearsal/demo recording.

As mentioned earlier, about how Tracks 2 and 3, "Believe" and "What If..." from this recording session finding their way onto the reissue of The Fragile Art of Existence, while Spirit Crusher did not. Due to having the remastered reference of "Believe" and "What If..." from this recording session, I was able to tweak the audio levels of "Spirit Crusher" to slightly match the audio levels of the other two songs as heard on the The Fragile Art of Existence 2/3 Disc reissues. So enjoy.