Obituary
Dying of Everything

It is not easy for me to review the new album by Obituary, their eleventh in over thirty-five years of career. Throughout the nineties, they were among my absolute cornerstones of Death Metal, thanks to their first three "evangelic" works (more precisely, the debut Slowly We Rot dates back to 1989). They continued, in a very irregular manner in terms of timing, to release albums without the slightest musical variation: direct, ruthless, Old School to keep it brief. Led by the Tardy brothers, John and Donald, and guitarist Trevor Peres, they arrive at the beginning of 2023 with Dying of Everything. One of the few positive notes I attribute to is the cover, so damn dark and twisted as I have been well accustomed to in both the recent and very distant past.

Production too precise, "clean" despite the sound. Everything sounds predictable, without the slightest error from the instruments. For many, this is a note of merit; for me, a lover of sound decay, of auditory dirt, it is not good. They have improved over the years in terms of quality, this is unquestionable, but I remain convinced that the "cavernous" Death Metal of Obituary must always harm the auditory system when listening. Unfortunately, this does not happen in the present.

Few, very few songs made me jump; in fact, only the opening track Barely Alive stuck in my mind: three relentless minutes, played at a terrifying speed. Death combined with a concentrate of Thrash-Hardcore with guitar sounds of evident Slayerian matrix!! For me, the album could already end here because right after, and I say this with emotional suffering given what the Florida guys used to be, the word boredom takes over.

Utterly banal mid-tempos heard dozens of times, sounds that in some passages steer towards Scandinavian Death Metal (particularly due to the crushing sound of the six strings), predictable accelerations, etc., etc. I really struggled to make it to the end of the work, and I'm exceedingly disappointed about it.

However, precisely for the visceral youthful love, they finally achieve a barely passing grade.

Diabolos Rising 666.