Review by Rexorcist for Obituary - Slowly We Rot (1989)

Obituary has special attention here on Metal Academy.  Quite a few people here  love it, especially the debut as opposed to their more renowned sophomore album, Cause of Death.  Not having been familiar with either, and having found myself in a death mood, I hightailed it to this band the instant I was done with Morbid Angel.  They're one of those bands I avoided for years due to violent lyrics.  I've been a bit of a goody-two-shoes about that considering that I was mostly avoiding it not to make peers around me mad.  No I just don't care about that anymore, so Obituary is a top-priority band now.  The people here love it, so it had better be good.

That doomy sound of there's hit me as soon as it made itself known.  We get plenty of death energy on this album, but the defining trait that set them apart was their love for the epic doomy stuff, and they didn't even need to go into the "traditional" territory to crush the soul.  That creepy and slow vibe in songs like "'Til Death" has so much ooze seeping out of it that it might as well be goring out like a Re-Animator movie.  And this isn't just a psychological vision induced by the album's green and slimy logo.  This is GROSS guitar, more sleazy than Bon Scott ever got.  And during some of the lighter moments there's some thrash energy.  Coincidentally, the title track features both traits.  So Obituary already set themselves apart as a death metal band with a broad range of attractors, attractors most death bands were missing at the time because they were too busy being "death."

Of course, while I love variety more than anyone on Metal Academy, and commend the band's efforts for variety and fluidity, this doesn't mean I've fallen head over heels for the compositions.  They're fun and energetic, but it's kind of in that Ramones "gotta-love-the-genre" kind of way rather than the intellectual way that make bands like Morbid Angel and Death so good.  Because of this, while the album remains good and commendably heavy, the thrashy and punkish charm loses its personality overtime, as well as the surprise of the slower doom.  In other words, this album with various attractors has songs that eventually mold into each other.

Obituary's debut certainly does have a strong appeal factor to it, and I appreciate everything it did right, becuase those aspects were performed at full throttle.  But they really weren't the best songwriters then.  At least the album remained pretty entertaining until the end, which means there's a keen consistency.  I can't see this making my top 50 death metal albums or anything, but for its mix of punk and doom influence, it was fun.