#at the gate

it is the hard edge of things i am avoiding the separations so that i can take my glasses off and then i cannot tell which are the leaves and which the angels like blake like that man who lived with the lepers not noticing what was sin and what was grace visioning visions vision i take my glasses off so i can see

Obituary: Slowly We Rot (1989)

Obituary never seem to get enough credit as death metal pioneers.

Too often they are taken for granted by heavy metal fans and critics, and I’m just as guilty as the next guy, so I’ll start this blog by calling out this injustice and then asking the most obvious question: why?

Most likely, the lack of respect is based on the fact that Obituary’s sound wasn’t always as complex, nor did it evolve as aggressively, as that of fellow genre architects like Death, Morbid Angel, Carcass, Entombed, Pestilence, et al.

But I dare say, in retrospect, that these Tampa natives -- originally formed all the way back in 1986 as Xecutioner -- in many ways epitomize the archetypal Floridian death metal band.

As far afield as other groups would travel, Obituary generally stuck with the same, steadfast formula throughout their career, and, with 1989’s utterly seminal Slowly We Rot, they arguably defined more fundamental death metal trademarks, sooner, than the other luminaries cited above. 

I’m talking trademarks like Trevor Perez’s alternately sludgy grooves and serrated riffs, Allen West’s hot-knife-through-butter solos, Donald Tardy’s clinical double kick drums and doomy tempos, and his brother John’s grotesque expectorations of both nonsensical sounds and actual gory lyrics.

The latter obviously decorated key cuts like “Internal Bleeding,” “Bloodsoaked,” “Stinkupuss,” and the title track -- while influencing scores of imitators in the likes of Gorguts, Monstrosity and even Cannibal Corpse who, again, more often than not, draw more belated praise than Obituary.

WTF!

And because other favorites like “Til’ Death,” “Intoxicated,” “Deadly Intentions” and the thrashy “Gates of Hell” weren’t impossible to play, Obituary also embodied the “punk role model” within the death metal community: basically encouraging inexperienced players (who may have otherwise been intimidated into inaction by Chuck Schuldiner’s virtuosity or Atheist’s heady death-jazz) to go and give this new music a try.

And try it they did, by the score, in every corner of the planet -- so much so that I’ve often wondered if growled vocals helped lower the “barrier-of-entry” for non-English-speaking nations to join the extreme metal movement on a global level.

So, all this being said, I’ll go out on a limb and proclaim that, in the year of no lord, 1989, there was no purer death metal album to be found on this quickly decomposing rock than Obituary’s Slowly We Rot -- may it decay at a leisurely rate forever more.