Pay to die, you sick motherfuckers

If pressed to select a single figure to represent the very essence of the metal underground, one would be incredibly foolish not to immediately grant the title to Paul Speckmann. Speckmann is, for all intents and purposes, the unsung godfather of death metal: a figure exalted to the highest level of genius by a tragically narrow few and condemned to obscurity by most in the shadow of less-deserving figures like Chuck Schuldiner. Speckmann, however, gives precisely zero fucks about the travesty that is his obscurity, as evidenced by his words of indifference regarding the greater success of other early death metal bands such as Death or Possessed. He's in it purely for the music and has been incessantly toiling in the underground for nearly three decades. He's metal all the way down; and the fact of the matter is that his contributions to the genre are of insurmountable importance due in no small part to his succinct, acerbic treatments of grand subjects that, in a fashion very similar to masters (pun intended) of the aphorism like Nietzsche or Shakespeare, express 20 pages of discourse in a phrase or two. Perhaps the most brilliant of his offerings of this sort comes in the form of "Pay to Die".

The song itself is a testament to the immense musical and philosophical potency of this genre. In seven words, Speckmann delivers a multi-faceted message of vitriol when he summarizes the absurdity of modern life with the profoundly simple proclamation: "pay to be born; pay to die". In his own words, from an interview with Jeff Tandy, Speckmann recounts the origin of the song:

"The song was about my father. He was always giving me hell and dragging me to church, and I was arguing with him over the years. Then he got sick and died, and obviously we had to pay to bury him, you know – “pay to die”! The words in the song speak for themselves – you pay to be born, you pay to die. It was real life for me at that time, and it hit really hard."

Jeff replies that the song itself seems to sum up American (read: modern) life, a suggestion to which Paul agrees. It is precisely this concise summary of life that makes it universally appealing. By and large, we live in a world dictated by monetary and utility values. Bouts with impassioned existential anxiety and theorizing on matters of abstraction, that is, activities that comprise the very essence of what it should mean to live a human life, are roadblocks in the modern zeitgeist that "Pay to Die" describes in which life is catalyzed, fueled, and eventually ended by petty material means. The venomous seven-word mantra simultaneously functions as a clarion call to action and a more general lamentation of the dreadful state of affairs in the modern world: a dual-edged blade that makes the song as viscerally moving as any piece of music I can think of.

In observing the development of the song itself from its various incarnations in Death Strike, Master, and eventually Speckmann Project, one can very nearly construct a well-informed history of death metal as a style unto its own. The song's debut on Death Strike's Fuckin' Death, released in January 1985, is best viewed as a microcosm of the formative years of extreme metal when the amorphous styles death metal, black metal, grindcore, and the like were simply a hazy amalgamation of similar influences from both metal and punk such as Venom, Slayer, and Discharge. Speckmann himself even notes that during the early years of Master/Death Strike, the term "death metal" wasn't in popular usage: they simply played "metal". An important feature to note of the earliest incarnation of "Pay to Die" is the eminent importance that the punk tendencies of Discharge play in driving the song. The drum beat is one of complete uniformity, and Speckmann's destructive vocals pay little heed to the inherent rhythm of the song as much as they do exist as an exclusively separate element of the song in their own right.

Move to the version we find on Master's self-titled 1990 album. There are a number of new things brought to the table with this performance of the song, each of which can be traced back to a predominantly greater "metal" orientation than the one found on Fuckin' Death or Master's 1985 rehearsal tape. The song begins with a percussive series of ascending and descending power-chord tones before bursting into the song's main "melodic" line at a slightly more fluid and urgent tempo. The subtle introduction of the second bass-drum in the verse, as well as the inclusion of abrupt fills indicate a movement away from the strict uniformity that defines earlier versions of the song. This movement away from the nascent form of death metal that the 1985 version epitomizes reaches its pinnacle in the version found on the 1992 Speckmann Project album, where the song is filtered through 7 years of fervent stylistic progression by means of the aforementioned movement away from structural and percussive uniformity. Simply put, the song is not only colossal on a philosophical level; it is also a standing monument to death metal as a whole.

The last nuance of the song I'd like to touch upon is the line bellowed at the end of the versions found on Master's self-titled album and the Speckmann Project album wherein Speckmann delivers the impassioned declaration: "pay to die, you sick motherfuckers". In this we find yet another dual meaning that only adds to the legacy of this masterpiece. Quite literally, we can take the term sick in a medical sense, with the line functioning as a juxtaposition of the loss of something as intangible as life with the utterly tangible notion of the modern world's fixation on material ends. The other interpretation logically follows where we may also take the term "sick" to indicate a moribund psychological state; as if Speckmann is diagnosing anyone that falls under the umbrella of defective mind-states the song describes. 

(note: the last video is actually of the version found on the Speckmann Project album).