There are not many death metal bands who can say that at their core they still have the same guys who were there at the very beginning, long before they found their name, their musical path and then getting signed, but Obituary can claim just that as when they first came together as Executioner all the way back in 1984 the line-up included John Tardy (vocals), Donald Tardy (drums) and Trevor Peres (rhythm guitar), and they are still there today. Obituary, with Scott Burns at the production helm, released one of the most important death metal debuts in ‘Slowly We Rot’, then they followed that up with the stunning ‘Cause of Death’, while ‘The End Complete’ is one of the best-selling death metal albums of all time, and with ‘World Demise’ the band worked with “Super” Brian Benscoter to bring in industrial sounds while John brought in environmental and societal concerns in his lyrics.
This four-disc set is more than 3½ hours in length, 55 tracks, and each of the discs contains a few additional songs in the form of demos, live or remix, while the booklet contains interesting information and plenty of photos which makes for a very nice set indeed. I would imagine that many metalheads will already have these albums, or at the very least one of them, but this is a set where (unlike the recent Deicide release) the songs stay fresh and do not run into each other, possibly due to Obituary having different lead guitarists and bassists through this period. The debut may not be more than 35 years old, but none of this sounds that old and it is still fresh, pummelling, while Tardy’s vocals are still as exciting as the very first time I heard them all those years ago.
Rating: 8/10
Links:
https://www.obituary.cc/
https://www.facebook.com/DissonanceProductionsUK/