Obituary Album: “Slowly We Rot”

Death metal's roots (at least the INFLUENCE) can easily be traced back to Europe where black and speed metal were starting to emerge in the mid 80's. Bands like Metallica and Slayer brought their own take on this sound to fair-sized American audiences with their early speed metal releases which were mostly inspired by those European bands who were starting things up across the ocean. However, death metal itself is completely an American construct, and most specifically, a genre that developed in the major cities of the state of Florida in the mid-late 80's. Tampa was probably THE key city that had the scene which would produce what is now known as "death metal." Obituary of course has their roots in this scene.

I was first introduced to this band sometime in the very early 90's via a computer network. This was before the Internet existed in its modern form. There was no WWW or websites. Computer communications were done via phone modems, dialing into local bulletin board systems (BBSes). Some of these systems were hooked into message networks where the messages were relayed from region to region by one BBS calling the most nearby one who was on the network and uploading the messages. Then, THAT computer would call the next closest one and relay the messages again. It was what could now be considered as a sort of primitive message forum network. Depending on when the relay calls were made, messages took from hours to several days to be relayed across regions.

I used these forums and was most interested in one concerning heavy metal music, because it was THE premier place to find out what was going on in the underground of metal music. This is where I first learned of Obituary (and other bands who were making themselves known in what was still really an underground genre. Napalm Death, accepted founders of grindcore, were also a high subject of discussion.). I learned that there were basically two places in North America where this "death metal revolution" was taking place. Mainly, Tampa, Florida (U.S.) and Toronto and Montreal (Canada). I'm not sure why but the Canadians in those cities had taken very kindly to the new emerging death metal sound and that became a scene in itself up there. I lived in the midwest United States so the part of the forum network I was on was pretty close to Canada, and therefore I met and discussed metal with many Canadians of my age on there.

In any regard, Obituary was the hot topic of this new thing called "death metal" and their reputation had spread up the 1,000 miles or so from Florida to the northern midwest United States and into Canada, where they were gaining very receptive audiences. And so seeing people talk about Obituary and Napalm Death, I was extremely interested because I was already a fan of extreme music, most notably the extreme metal bands of the time that I knew about. By the time I was into all of this, Obituary's second album, Cause of Death had been released so Slowly We Rot was not the FIRST CD I got by them, but it definitely is the one that basically formed the genre.

And an amazing album it is. You can definitely hear the influence, mostly in the tempos and tempo changes, that bands like Venom and Slayer had. Obituary is truly one of a kind and IMO, the DEFINITE true pioneers and essential "creators" of the death metal genre. The sound on this album is like nothing that had ever come before. A keen ear will hear the influence from the European black metal bands and subsequent adaptions by American speed metal bands, but "death metal" didn't exist. Until Obituary started playing it and released this album.

Since then, death metal has come to encompass a lot of sub-genres and different sounds, and notably, I would say, modern "death metal" bands are largely concerned with increasing technical skill and complication of the music. While that was good at first, it now really dulls down the original feel and spirit that Obituary was pumping out in 1989 and years to come. I'm sure at the time Slowly We Rot was released, peoples' minds were blown at what was being played, because it was absolutely revolutionary. And it has never been duplicated, only has influenced other bands to come later.

This CD is harsh, biting, brutal; it tears into the listener like a sharp-bladed shiny knife. The tempos move and bend like the winds of a violent storm. The riffs and beats pound with a substance and power that modern death metal cannot match. The "feeling," the original feeling of death metal you will find no better than Obituary's first few albums. Since then, people have adapted the genre, made changes, and tried to replicate in some ways what this band did, but no one has ever produced that pure, original, one-of-a-kind vibe that Obituary created. If you are into true original death metal and this band, you MUST own this CD. It definitely created the genre as a whole.