February 1, 2011 In 2009, Drag City introduced devotees of rock obscurities to Death, a trio formed in the early ’70s by the Hackney brothers of Detroit. Originally an R&B/funk act, Death’s members became preoccupied with the proto-punk sounds coming out of their city, and recorded an abbreviated set of raging, experimental rock songs for a major-label debut album that was never completed. Drag City released those seven songs as …For The Whole World To See, and have now followed that up with Spiritual Mental Physical, a collection of demos. Nothing on the new set is as mind-blowing as The Whole World’s alternately assaultive and trippy “Politicians In My Eyes,” but in some ways, the Hackneys sounded even more ahead of their time when they were just dicking around. READ MORE: A.V. Club.com

January 26, 2011 In 2009, Detroit pre-punk band Death released its unfinished 1976 album For The Whole World To See—a short collection of songs that were written too early for their time. It was an eye-opening look at a power trio that had lost 30 years and a guitarist by the time anyone started paying attention to its music. Death, it quickly became clear, predicted a strain of loud and fast rock music that took over within a decade. Now, a new release titled Spiritual-Mental-Physical  attempts to flesh out Death’s legacy through a series of demo tapes. READ MORE: CMJ.com

January 24, 2011 The unearthing and release of Detroit proto-punks Death's ...For The Whole World To See  in 2009 was a cause for celebration. For the decades between its 1975 recording and its subsequent release on Drag City, the band was almost nothing more than a curiosity to collectors, the one single from the album ("Politicians In My Eyes" b/w "Keep On Knocking") quickly falling out of print and into rarity status. When the seven songs that make up ...For The Whole World To See were made available, a crucial part of the punk-rock Rosetta stone was finally filled in. During Death's initial run, you had a band that could zip along with the nervous energy of the Buzzcocks, or bring jet-fueled aggression along the lines of the Bad Brains, all before either of these bands existed. READ MORE: Prefix.com

January 25, 2011 When Death’s 1974 demos, …For the Whole World to See, were finally excavated in 2009, they proved the missing link between the Stooges’ “No Fun” and Bad Brains’ “Pay to Cum.” Ultimately, the three Hackney brothers turned from furious garage-punk to mellow reggae, wholly forgotten by history. Dug up from the basement of a defunct Detroit studio, this set of hissy practice tapes varies greatly in quality with the demented trashing of a Beatles melody on “The Masks” and the snotty sneer of “Can You Give Me a Thrill???” abutting stoned instrumentals and solo noodling. READ MORE: Spin.com

January 28,2011 Brothers Bobby and Dannis Hackney are now dusting off a batch of unreleased demos and session outtakes from immediately before and after the recording of their long- fermenting album. The band has undeniable horsepower, driven mostly by Dannis’s fantastic drumming, and that strength shows itself in a few key moments here, but the collection is unfortunately padded with half an album’s worth of inconsequential rehearsal extracts. It starts out well enough with “Views,” introducing a charmingly rugged garage-production value that pervades throughout the whole album. READ MORE: Slant.com

January 18, 2011 Rough is a good word to describe these recordings. Most of the tracks sound like a 3 mic job recorded in someones garage including the classic analog tape hum. The result is a certain appealing rawness that delivers a moment of history and celebrates the DIY spirit of punk. The 10 tracks are diverse often straying from the punk formula that bloggers have praised the 3 brothers from Detroit for on their full length. The album ends with ‘Bobby Bassin It’ and ‘Dannis on the Motor City Drums’ which are basically solo jam sessions with no other accompaniment. ‘The Change’ and ‘David’s Dream (Flying)’ are two dreamy and soft instrumentals that borderline on more of bluesy feel with interplay between two guitars meandering about. ‘World Tomorrow’ has some ballad qualities with a slower tempo and the overdrive turned low, but it delivers great classic rock feel. READ MORE: Theline of the best fit.com

February 7,2011 When Drag City issued power trio Death's unissued 1973 Detroit singles in 2009 as For the Whole World to See, they unearthed classic underground Detroit rock. Those tracks were finished but raw, exceedingly well written and ferociously performed by the Hackney brothers: guitarist David, bassist Bobby, and drummer Dannis. The ten cuts on Spiritual Mental Physical were recorded as demos and rehearsals between 1974 and 1976 and were never intended for release; thank goodness the Hackneys agreed to issue them. READ MORE: Allmusic.com

February 1, 2011 Pairing R&B chops with scorching, Stooges-worthy bashing, Death's mid-1970s demos-- compiled and released by Drag City as For the Whole World to See-- lived up to every bit of their missing-link and lost-classic billing when they finally arrived, more than three decades late, in 2009. Spiritual, Mental, Physical-- a follow-up collection of grotty practice tapes and studio goofs culled from a set of tape reels recently unearthed in a Detroit basement-- READ MORE: Pitchfork.com