Obituary - Cause of Death (1990) Reviews

Cause of Death is hands down the best album these Floridian death metal legends would ever produce. Their debut Slowly We Rot was certainly an enjoyable release that showcased how filthy and brutal, yet groovy and memorable these guys can be, yet Cause of Death took everything they were doing earlier and added one extremely vital ingredient. James Murphy!

Obituary were already a formidable outfit, particularly with John Tardy's incredibly violent, guttural, vocal talent leading the way. They'd already created their identity through Donald Tardy's restrained drums and West's and Peres's dark, evil riffs. But what they truly lacked was the incredibly beautiful lead work that James Murphy brought into the band during his short stint.

Tracks like Infected and Body Bag are great tracks regardless, but his lead work just takes them to a whole new level. Other highlights include Dying, the title track and Memories Remain. Add to all this some fantastic artwork and the fact that all 9 tracks are great, and you get an essential death metal classic. Unfortunately, Obituary would degrade into a very much by the numbers type band that would make it easy to overlook their earlier, more inspired outings. Make sure you don't make that mistake!

When I checked out the Obituary debut, Slowly We Rot, I noticed its many facets pretty quickly and was impressed with the band's stylistic range, even if many of the same songs took from the same influences.  I wasn't quite as impressed with that album as others, although I still liked it.  But I've been aware of their sophomore's status as a die hard classic of the death scene for a while.  Basically, if there was a Big Four of Floridian Death Metal, Obituary would've cemented themselves as one of them with this album alone, considering the reputation it gets.  So with everyone hyping it up, I was really hoping this album would live up to that hype.

It comes as no surprise that the album is much doomier and slower at times.  This not only sets this album apart from the majority of other OSDM bands, but is a perfect stylistic choice to expand upon Obituary's special brand of "evil" that they built there early careers on.  And this evil isn't one of those interesting little treats that wears out its welcome by the end.  It stays strong and even scary throughout the whole.  This also means that with the doom persona expanded, the thrash of the debut is given little to no attention.  I'd say that despite the further lack of variety this decision entails, it was for the best because the end result was stronger personality.  And without the thrash, this also means that the scariness is replacing the sleaziness of the debut, which means Obituary can also shift their personalities easily depending on the direction they take.  This is a special trait that may go over people's heads if they hear this before the debut.  Maybe this aspect came from hiring Death's guitarist, James Murphy?  Whatever it was, it certainly did this album a unique justice.  And thanks to the abundance of doominess, extremely speedy tracks like the 2:40 Find the Arise come as shocks to the system.  And whenever we get a doomy, ambient sound effect beginning a song or somewhere in the middle of one, there's just this weird blend of gothic terror and total tranquility that comes from it.  These effects might not have had such a strong effect if the band's performances didn't have so dark of a personality.

If only just once, Obituary nearly perfected their craft.  What we have hear is an album that, while still doom-focused, recreates heaviness in a number of forms working together to tell a deathly horror story through riffs and monstrous vocals.  This is miles ahead of the debut, as this isn't just some guitar-driven riff fest.  This is a death metal album that's all atmosphere all the time.  The improvement over Slowly We Rot of its artistic maturity is staggering.  I've heard quite a few slow and doomy death bands (not death doom metal), and none of them are as horrifying as this.

Obituary's debut Slowly We Rot was an exceedingly solid slab of death metal and was a decent calling card for the Floridians. However, the improvement from that album to Cause of Death is marked. With this Obituary made their most significant contribution to the development of death metal and in so doing laid down a stone-cold classic.

Cause of Death retained the things that the debut did well - John Tardy's vocals remained equally as evil-sounding and depraved and the guitar tone that dominated Slowly We Rot, derived as it so obviously is from Celtic Frost's classic sound, was honed to virtually the perfect death metal guitar sound that, for me, defined what OSDM riffs should sound like. On top of those good things from SWR, this time round Obituary upped their songwriting skills and the tracks on Cause of Death are far more memorable than those found on the debut, Body Bag and the title track, for example I find still rolling round my head long after the disc stops spinning. There aren't as many doomy, slow sections, but when the pace drops, I would say they are better done and are more effective for their sparseness. The most obvious upgrade from Slowly We Rot is the addition of transformative lead guitarist James Murphy whose contributions here, similarly to those he made on Death's Spiritual Healing from the same year, made an enormous difference, his solos being far more skillfully executed and interesting than those of his predecessor, Allen West. I don't think the improvements his involvement entailed can be underestimated as he is obviously an exceptionally gifted axeman and he managed to bring the soloing style of classic heavy metal gods like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest into the gnarly and foetid world of death metal without it sanitising the filthiness of the band's death metal sound but instead celebrating and bestowing it with a classiness it previously lacked. Drummer Donald Tardy also seemed to have upped his game and the addition of new bassist Frank Watkins solidified the rhythm section and they seem more on point with the pacier material of Cause of Death.

Once more, however, the band were determined to include a Celtic Frost cover and even though their version of Circle of the Tyrants is actually pretty awesome, it seems kind of redundant when you think that the band were one of the pioneers of a newer, more brutal style of metal, so why did they feel the need to reference back to earlier material that they had usurped and superceded? This is the only negative I can think of with regard to Cause of Death though and even that is kind of half-hearted because, as I said, the cover is actually excellent. I've not heard a lot of Obituary after this release, but consensus seems to be that they were never this good again, but to have been this good even once is an achievement not to be sniffed at.

Back in the day this record definitely would have received an instant 5 stars from me as it was simply that influential on me at a very young & impressionable age when I was just freshly converted to the wonders of death metal. These days I can see it through an unbiased lens & it's definitely not without it's faults but it was certainly a revelation at the time & the highlights are truly gargantuan. John Tardy's monstrous vocal performance is arguably the best in all of death metal in my opinion. He's certainly the most unique vocalist the scene has ever produced as there's no one that comes close to touching the sheer ferocity of his talent. The recruitment of hired gun shredder James Murphy was a master stroke too as his highly melodic & technically dazzling contribution really does take this record to another level from anything the band would have been able to produce previously. The trademark Obituary rearranged-5th chords have never sounded so good while the cover artwork is my personal favourite of all time & goes a long way to maximizing my passion. The weaknesses of the album are the faster sections where the rhythm section draw upon "Leprosy"-era Death for inspiration as those parts tend to sound a little tame in comparison to the ridiculously heavy & doomy slow sections which are Obituary's real forte if you ask me. It's often a matter of less is more with Obituary as their controlled restraint is possibly their biggest strength & that's not something you can say about too many extreme metal acts. The song structures sound pretty loose & pieced together at times but thankfully every track includes at least one or two monlithic riffs of pure death to draw you in & Obituary understood how to create that authentic graveyard atmosphere as well as any death metal band that's ever picked up an instrument.

Looking back it's not difficult to see why "Cause Of Death" not only set a new standard for the band but also took them to the top of the Florida tree with Morbid Angel. The album reeks of underground credibility but it also manages to stay accessible enough to draw in a sizeable fanbase. I can't say that I regard it as highly as I did when I was a kid but it's clearly Obituary's finest work & stands as a key piece of death metal's historical puzzle. Even the cover version of Celtic Frost's "Circle Of The Tyrants" is a strong inclusion & represents one of the rare occasions when I actually think the cover may eclipse the original. The huge influence of Frost on Obituary's signature sound certainly helped in that regard as it doesn't sound anywhere near as out of place as many extreme metal cover versions do. When I look back on my youth in years to come I doubt my brain will ever forget to attach a soundtrack that includes belters like "Infected" or "Memories Remain" to the images in my head & this last 24 hours has seen me relishing the chance to regain an awareness of a time that I regard as one of the best of my entire life, purely through the sounds that played such a huge role in it.

For fans of Autopsy, Jungle Rot & Asphyx.

With their debut album being my gateway record into death metal, it was odd that I never bothered with their sophomore until many years after its release.  Part of this was due to my inconsistent income as a teenager and also my ever changing tastes/band interests at the time.  Naturally, when I eventually caught up with Cause of Death I was impressed to hear that it was superior to the debut by some distance.  In the course of just over a year Obituary matured a lot.  Whereas Slowly We Rot opened my mind up to reaches of metal that I had never imagined possible, the follow up made no attempt to push those boundaries any further and just focused instead on showing how well they had learned their trade and how devastating they could be with death metal.

If I am honest, I can't remember Cause of Death track by track like I can for (virtually) all of the debut album.  This is in no small part due to the fact that it represents much less of a nostalgia item than it predecessor.  By the time I had gotten to this record I had consumed the likes of Deicide, Morbid Angel and Bolt Thrower to name but a few and so was hardly likely to be flat knocked on my arse like I was by their first album where I had heard zero death metal at the time.  However, despite having heard all those other death metal albums there still was an obvious superiority to Cause of Death.  It had taken all the consistent and good parts of what came before it and developed them to masterpieces of death metal.  Whereas the debut at times felt a bit scattergun in composition, this album had clearly much more form to it.  In constructing that well-structured record they had not lost any of their otherworldly appeal either, with Tardy's vocals sounding just as alien and horrific as before.  The main difference this time around was the loss of those tracks that came in at under two minutes or somehow peddled just over three minutes like some grind mentality was adopted at the start, replaced now instead by tracks pushing the five and a half or six minute boundaries.

This spoke volumes for the maturity but also confidence of the band at the time, grasping that unique sound of just fifteen months before and honing into more invested structures.  Now, fresh off his work on Spiritual Healing in February of the same year, James Murphy's inclusion in the band (in replacement of Allen West) is undoubtedly a contributing factor in the success of this record.  We also saw the late Frank Watkins replace Daniel Tucker on bass.  Although still in the very early stages of his career and yet to become well known for the technical focus he had on his music, it is safe to say that Frank's inclusion in the ranks also helped to further stabilise this groups astonishing potential and help that be realised on this record.  Let's also not forget that by 1990 the group had been early progenitors of the Tampa death metal scene for six years in one guise or another so had a god few years of experience under their belt.

Unafraid to use a variety of pace, Obituary could build a looming sense of dread just like the best death/doomsters could before following through on that threat by instantly switching to a frenzied attack like all the best slasher flicks.  The riffs positively motored on early Obituary albums but had real clutch control to boot, with the band able to drop down a gear or two to really emphasise that even in the most furious of moments they still had that constant and underlying menace about them.  The sonics here are woven into the fabric of the tracks.  They don't just start or appear as such, instead they sound like they just pick up momentum and volume, occupying the space around the vocals and other instruments like they have always been there but you somehow have missed them. 

Although a more refined affair, you can still hear similarities with the likes of Autopsy as well as of course early Death (helped in no small part by Murphy I suspect) on the record which altogether gave the album a real grounded, relevant and familiar feel - certainly at the time - like Obituary were clearly running shoulder to shoulder with the big hitters of the fast emerging death metal scene.  This record was the high-point of Obituary's career and one that probably saw them peak far too soon (listen to any of their output from the last six or seven years and you'll hear yards of unexpected quality that just somehow only comes in spurts nowadays). 

As a death metal record this is probably one of the most important in the development of the genre.  Its effortlessly put together and yet sounds like months of prep went into it at the same time, like going into recording this was all second nature to a seriously talented bunch of young guys.