Artist: Obituary
Label: Roadrunner Records
Release Date: 1989
Rating: 5 Skulls
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Title: Slowly We Rot Artist: Obituary Label: Roadrunner Records Release Date: 1989
Rating: 5 Skulls |
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Reviewed by Mark Jordan:
High summer, 1989. I take the walk into town to read this week's batch of Metal magazines, the ones I can't afford but are my only source of information and inspiration. Flicking sneakily through Metal Forces, I'm drawn to a review of an album by a band that the reviewer maintains are somewhere between Bathory and Sindrome. I'd heard Bathory on pirate radio and loved their droning intensity, the slice of the riffs, but Sindrome doesn't ring any bells. Nevertheless, I'm mildly intrigued. I decide out of curiosity to cross-reference Kerrang and Metal Hammer. In Kerrang, Phil Alexander waxes eloquent about the brutality, intensity and originality of this record and somehow I become mesmerized and obsessed by it....I'd burnt out on Slayer, overdosed on Minor Threat, been disappointed by the lack of diversity that characterised Napalm Death's first two albums. I needed something fresh, something that would kill the threat of losing interest in extreme music. I left the shop on a mission and nearly stepped into the putrescent carcass of a cat that hadn't made it across the main road. The stench was gagging and overpowering in the summer heat and immediately I knew it was a sign - get that album. I sold some books, borrowed shamelessly and hitched a ride into town, straight down to the Sound Cellar. And there it was, staring right at me. I didn't hesitate for a second.
When I finally got some time on my own with the stereo, I slid the precious, cold blackness out of its sleeve and gently laid it on the turntable. I hitched the bass up to 10 and the treble up to 5 and sat back. Slow tendrils of dark ambiance crept from the speakers, shivering black in the air - soothing, almost. Something rumbled, something grated... coffin lids? Instantly, a massive tumult of toms broke free and shattered the eerie calm, rent asunder by a mighty, guttural growl. Merciless double-bass drumming pinned a steady bandsaw of a riff in place. It was so simple yet so beautiful and so... intense. No histrionics, no clever timechanges, no showing-off-how-fast-they-could-play - these guys were simply building an atmosphere, painting brutality with their instruments. They wanted to project a feeling of intensity, evoke an impression in the listener. Nothing like this had ever been committed to vinyl before, this unrelenting assault of simple, open-string riffing. And I was hooked. John Tardy shrieked a litany of horrific incomprehensibles and I shivered. The intensity picked up pace mid-song as the band broke into a speedrun and buzzsawed their way into the final home run of grinding, doom-soaked intensity.
"Internal Bleeding" sets the tone for the rest of the album, layers of intense asymmetrical riffing, unified by the band's mission, a deceptively simple one: create the most intense sound possible. Songs like "Suffocation" and "'Til Death" impress, choosing to drub the listener into submission with slower, menacing, downright creepy passages rather than an out-and-out speed onslaught. There are faster highlights such as "Godly Beings" and "Words of Evil", which borders in places on Grindcore speedtrapping. But it's the inherent melody in songs like "Intoxicated" and "Blood Soaked" that set the album apart from its peers and heralded a departure for Death Metal at that point in its history. Admittedly, years later, after checking out Celtic Frost, I noticed how they lift some riffs wholesale from Warrior & Co. and their overall riffing sensibility is a direct progression from Frost's style. But CF never achieved this killer tone, the unrelenting fierceness in their music. Quite simply, they never went quite so far in achieving atmosphere with guitar tone as the Obies do here so successfully.
Cause of Death is undoubtedly Obituary's career zenith, they refined their sound and fused melody with brutality for that outing to create an eeriness unequalled in the history of extreme music. But Slowly We Rot set a benchmark for intensity that only they themselves could better, ushered in a new kind of guitar tone and helped establish Scott Burns as THE Death Metal producer.
Buy it and burn.
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