Date Signed: Late 2025
Label: Relapse Records
Members: Matt Harvey, vocals, guitar; Rick Rozz, guitar; Terry Butler, bass; Gus Rios, drums
Type of Music: Death Metal
Booking: Ben Ward, Napalm Events - ben.ward@napalm-events.com
Publicity: Liz Ciavarella-Brenner - Earsplit PR pip@relapse.com
Web: instagram.com/left_to_die_official
The death metal band called simply Death is one of the most influential groups ever associated with the genre. Considered pioneers, more so than other veterans such as Deicide, Cannibal Corpse, and Morbid Angel, Death ceased to exist as a band in 2001 when main man Chuck Schuldiner passed away. But before that, the albums Scream Bloody Gore, Leprosy, and Spiritual Healing in particular (but not exclusively) helped to shape the death metal landscape,
Without Schuldiner, there’s no Death. But there are two bands featuring former members, that are out there keeping Death’s music alive (so to speak): Death to All, and this one—Left to Die—formed by alumni Rick Rozz and Terry Butler.
“A few years back, Gus [Rios] and I were asked to perform Spiritual Healing in its entirety for two nights in Tampa with Terry and James Murphy,” says vocalist Matt Harvey, also of Gruesome. “The gigs were well received, and Rick thought that it would be cool to do something similar with him and the three of us doing Leprosy. Before we started Gruesome, we had talked about pitching something similar to Eric Grief (RIP), who was managing Death to All at the time, but nothing came of it, so we just did our own project—at first as something just for fun, but then Savage Land kind of took off and found an audience, so we kept doing it—which of course is how we got tapped for the Spiritual Healing gigs, so it was weirdly a full circle thing for Gus and myself.”
Left to Die recently signed with Relapse Records, and is releasing the album Initium Mortis, a record of re-recorded songs from the demo era of Death and Mantas (Death’s original name).
“After our first tour, people kept asking us about the possibility of writing/recording stuff, but in the end, we thought doing these tunes would allow us to stay in the ‘tribute band’ lane while also presenting songs that had only previously been recorded very crudely in an updated way,” Harvey says.
For the members of Left to Die, a deal with Relapse was a no-brainer. “Since I work with Relapse with Exhumed and Gruesome, and Terry works with them with Obituary and they have the Death catalog, I don’t know that any other label would have really made sense,” Harvey says. “I reached out to them, we talked about what would make sense, and then it was off to the races.”
