Scott Burns

By virtue of geography and a predilection for extremes, producer Scott Burns became the go-to guy for death metal in the late '80s and early '90s. Living in south Florida, an area that was to death metal what Seattle was to grunge, Burns began his career by doing live sound for bands such as Obituary and Massacre. The job eventually led to an apprenticeship at Morrisound Studios, ground zero for the death metal scene. He assisted on Death's Leprosy, as well as Obituary's Slowly We Rot, and through building a resumé, he eventually began engineering and producing Cannibal Corpse and Deicide, the genre's top acts at the time. A lucky break sent Burns to Brazil (no other producer wanted to spend his Christmas in a studio), where he recorded Beneath the Remains, the American debut of Sepultura. Burns continued to rise to the fore of the death metal scene, but as he was so deeply associated with it, when the genre petered out in the late '90s, the producer, pigeonholed by the industry, found it difficult to get work in other genres and has only worked on a handful of relevant records since. ~ Steve Kurutz, All Music Guide