Boxset Review: Obituary - Godly Beings
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
The Too-Long-Didn’t-Read review goes like this: “Obituary’s first four albums are being rereleased as a set with some bonus shit. You know you wanna.” It’s concise and to the point, but short on the word count and the editor-in-chief scares me, so I’d better flesh it out a bit!
Cast your mind’s back to – or imagine a magical time called – the Eighties; when there was only about half-a-dozen different categories of Heavy Metal, and you were either a pimply-geek who liked Thrash, or one of those pretty boys into the Glam. Back then the heaviest thing around was Slayer and no one could have imagined anyone going harder than they did on Hell Awaits.
Scum was still a few years away, but in the fetid swamps of Florida, brothers John and Donald Tardy, along with Trevor Peres formed Executioner in 1984 – dropping the E in 1986 – until they ditched that name altogether and became Obituary.
They first found a wider audience on the Raging Death compilation in 1987, with the future-classic Find the Arise, and the not so long-lasting Like the Dead, solidifying the line up that would go on to record the debut album with the recruitment of guitarist Allen West and bassist Daniel Tucker.
The band’s debut album, Slowly We Rot will need little introduction; released in 1989 and produced by the Midas-touch of Morrisound’s Scott Burns, it lit the touchpaper that would ignite the whole Death Metal scene – foreshadowed by Possessed and Death – but blowing up with Morbid Angel, Deicide and Cannibal Corpse.
The title track, ‘Til Death, Intoxicated, Internal Bleeding and Bloodsoaked still regularly find their ways into the band’s set to this day, and listening back to these tunes, familiar friends that they are, it should be remembered how earth-shatteringly shocking they were back in the day.
It clearly wasn’t about the speed either, with Slowly We Rot being a doomy bruiser as opposed to the flailing filthy riffs of Gates of Hell, Immortal Visions and Godly Beings. It’s made all the more impressive when you realise both Trevor and Allen were playing in a standard E tuning and were not using the natural heaviness of dropped D.
John’s voice is a mixture of death growls, moans and screams, all of which compliment the low-fi production before the Scandinavians embraced that particular darkness. Couple that with the iconic album cover, the instantly recognisable logo, and the putrid graphics of the title, and it’s little wonder Obituary had themselves a winner.
The aforementioned Raging Death tunes Find the Arise and Like the Dead’s demo are the two bonus tunes on Slowly We Rot; the first sounds much more in-your-face than the version that would appear on the next record and hinted at the groove that the band would incorporate into their sound, along with John’s insane screams.
A new year, a new decade and a new album, as Obituary returned to Morrisound for the sophomore Cause of Death, released in the autumn of 1990. Both Allen and Daniel departed, to be replaced by ex-Death man, James Murphy and Frank Watkins, respectively.
Immediately sounding more polished than its predecessor, Cause of Death’s slickness is slower and more deliberate than Slowly We Rot, as though the corporal themes of Cannibal Corpse had somehow bled over into Obituary.
Infected lumbers with a fuzzy guitar tone, Body Bag and Chopped in Half seem to revel in their clearly superior construction and Find the Arise comes over a more cultured than its demo version. The guitars of Murphy and Peres haunt this record; screaming bends and slow, sick riffs mark this as a very different beast, though clearly as coming from the same, twisted minds.
An Obituary show would hardly be complete without Finds the Arise or Dying, and Turned Inside Out is as close to a danceable singalong as any of the first wave of Death Metal bands came (except maybe Morbid Angel’s The Ancient Ones).
The album also contained their cover version of Celtic Frost’s Circle of the Tyrants and this version includes the demo versions of Infected, Memories Remains and Chopped in Half, all of which are rougher and more raw versions of their album counterparts.
The iconic cover, Lovecraft’s Nightmare A by Michael Whelan, was supposed to have been the sleeve art of Sepultura’s Beneath the Remains, but for some sort of administrative cock-up at Roadrunner, which resulted in the Brazilians using Whelan’s Nightmare in Red for their break-through album. FYI: Lovecraft’s Nightmare B was used in 1992 for the cover of Demolition Hammer’s Epidemic of Violence.
In case you hadn’t guessed yet the third disc is the band’s 1992 album, The End Complete which found Murphy off with Cancer – the band, not the affliction – and Allen back in the fold for what is widely considered the band’s classic line up. Once again produced by the maestro Scott Burns at Morrisound the album shifted a considerable number of units across the globe and the updated logo became Roadrunner Record’s best-selling shirt print ever.
Retaining the slower, hardcore grooves of Cause of Death, but incorporating Allen’s course sound from the debut, opener I’m in Pain comes to remind us that the gentrification of Death Metal had not yet darkened Obituary’s door. Dead Silence, In the End of Life and Sickness all wallowed in an oozing mire of foulness, thick and cloying as molasses; Corrosive, the title track and Rotting Ways all seal the deal and reiterate the unique sound of the band.
Live versions of I’m in Pain and Killing Time are included here, and I have particularly fond memories of seeing Obituary for the first time on the 1992 Campaign for Musical Destruction Tour at Manchester International II, with Napalm Death and Dismember. Would love to watch that one again.
By the time 1994’s World Demise was issued, the world of extreme music was a very different one than that which welcomed Slowly We Rot. Maintaining the same personnel and same production team as the past trio, the new album was – and still is, in my humble opinion – the weakest of the band’s releases to that point.
Lead single Don’t Care opens with some grooves, Redefine bounces along with some zeal, and Boiling Point bubbles away with added zip. As the record comes to an end Kill For Me rears its earworm-face. Burned In, Solid State and Set in Stone are standard Obituary fare which had been done better earlier, and though World Demise is no slouch when it comes to Death Metal records, when set against the (un)holy trinity of Slowly, Cause, and Complete, it is found somewhat short of the mark
Additional material here is live versions of Infected, Godly Beings, and Body Bag, a cover of Venom’s Buried Alive and an industrial remix of Boiling Point.
Included with the four-disc set is a full colour booklet with liner notes from David E Gehlke, cover the early years of the band from inception to the release of World Demise.
One more album, 1997’s Back from the Dead and Obituary would take an eight-year hiatus, coming back invigorated with Frozen in Time and a regular stream of albums and tours since.
Allen would depart after Frozen, and Frank would split his time between Obituary and Gorgoroth until his untimely passing in 2015.
Obituary is still clocking up the air-miles to this day, laying waste to venues with their slithering brand of old school Death Metal, even though long teeth and longer beards suggest they might consider growing old gracefully.
There’s always another tour and – at the time of writing – the band is scheduled to bring the curtain down on Bloodstock Open Air 2025 and send that festival into history with a devastating set.
