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

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.