Florida might be most famous for family-friendly theme parks and fun in the sun—but in 1989, in a cheap Tampa-area motel room, the band Death was hard at work on one of the state's darker contributions to American culture. It was there the four-member band and its manager stayed while recording the seminal 1990 album Spiritual Healing.
Death's third studio album evolved its sound beyond its thrash metal roots into something slower, heavier, more melodic, more distinctly "death metal," with lyrics that focused less on bloody gore and more on the darker corners of society and the human soul. Alongside contemporary offerings from the bands Morbid Angel, Obituary, and Deicide, it helped solidify the then-nascent Tampa Bay scene as the capital of American death metal.
