Bobby Koelble — born in the United States in 1968 — was the guitarist on Death's Symbolic (1995), an album frequently named the band's most fully realised. His contribution lies in the balance. Symbolic is the record on which Chuck Schuldiner found the point between aggression and composition: the tracks keep weight and speed but rest on elaborate harmonic progressions and melodies that develop rather than merely repeat. Koelble, with jazz training, played the solos with clean phrasing and a vocabulary that did not come from metal — modal scales, resolved chromaticism, precise attack. He is a case of a musician whose time in a band was short but decisive: he recorded a single album and is remembered for it. After leaving Death he pursued a career outside metal, devoting himself to jazz and to teaching guitar in Florida. He has returned to play the band's repertoire occasionally in commemorative projects.
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