Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Obituary - Cause of Death (1990)

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.