Ah, remember those wonderful glory days of music from the late 80’s and early 90’s? For many people the bands that first come to mind are Nirvana, Alice In Chains, and other grunge acts whom were taking the radio waves by storm. There was another creature which was far more dangerous and only few mortals knew of the demon that was has been devouring in the underground for sometime. Many critics tried to kill the beast by saying it is immoral and dehumanizing. Like any zombie and demon you may have seen from the Evil Dead series, you can cut up the work of evil and it will just keep on getting stronger in force. The genre which refuses to stay dead is of course the forever murderous death metal. The phenomenon started with underground tape trading like with most underground extreme genres including black and thrash has spawn forth from. There were so many great death metal scenes around the globe during the 80s and 90’s it was very hard to keep the infection contained. We had Sweden with their heavy weights like Grave and Dismember. From the U.K we had Carcass and the mighty Bolt Thrower. With so much aggression and energy induce carnage, America was no immune from the bite by the death metal bug as well. One of the most dangerous of the pathogens that still continues to reign supreme from Florida is no other than the rancid Obituary. With their brand new release of their 2017 self-titled album, these death metal loving rednecks will show you a thing or two in what it means to be brutal!
Obituary (released via Relapse) is what every old school death fan can possibly imagine from the Tardy brothers. It is a follow up album from Inked In Blood ( released 2014 via Relapse). When I saw these death metal rednecks back in Germany for Wacken Open Air 2015, I was not disappointed. John Tardy (vocals) still has that vocal approach that could skin you alive with such speed and approach. Not to mention Donald Tardy drumming has the right combination of groove and aggression that many of the new-schoolers can learn from. This is quite evident on this self-titled album they created the energy once more from the time I saw them in Germany is still going strong on this album. “Sentence Day” and “A Lesson in Vengeance” are the skeletal structure that helps shape the album’s overall vibe. Highly intense groovy foundation thanks to Trevor Peres (rhythm guitar) and Terry Butler (bass guitar) will give you a playlist to help slay the living dead or eat the living; whatever suits your fancy!
This album has such an old school Cause of Death vibe, it will bring the nostalgic feeling when it was good to be a death metal fanatic. With songs like “It Lives’ and “Betrayed” you can hear the Florida death metal sound which the band had helped to shape back in the day and is still going strong! With the aid of John vocals and Kenny Andrews (lead guitar) the memories of the teenage years of horror movies and catchy heavy riffs will have you blasting this album for weeks to come! This was one of the most anticipated death metal albums for me since the live album Ten Thousand Ways to Die (released 2016 via Relapse) was out in October to tease the fans that a new album was in the works. It has all the workings an old school death metal fan would love. Catchy riffs and vocals that are just heavy enough to make people new to the genre get on board.
Many people said death metal is a rotting corpse, but they did not tell you that rotting corpse is the walking dead forever devouring and multiplying and getting stronger each year with releases such as these. Giving the special nature of this album, I will give this album 5 skulls out of 5. Go buy it now at the band’s website or at your local record store. Buy it now!
Key Tracks: Ten Thousand Ways to Die, It Lives, A Lesson in Vengeance
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