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Rating: I talk about Obituary, but I am essentially taking up public space unduly. And I do this with a brief preamble: a few weeks ago, I went to see Fire + Ice: we weren't more than a hundred. Last Thursday, I was one of the fifty lucky ones to attend a rare and special event, made possible thanks to the commitment and determination of a visionary who believed in the endeavor and a great artist (and, at this point, a great person) who was spotted while vacationing in Italy, and who gave (in the sense that HE GAVE EVERYTHING) to a few fans, simply out of passion, love for his "craft" and a spirit of sharing, giving us/himself a fantastic evening.
Finally, on Friday night, I went to see the dear old Obituary. Of course, there were a bit more than fifty of us, but Tardy and his companions were only a few meters away (between me and them: just wild moshing) from my position, from which I was able to enjoy every single note in "tranquility": I was thirsty for Obituary and I drank them up to the last drop, thanks not only to the physical proximity but also to the perfect sounds and the comfort of the welcoming location (the Jungle park arena, which hosted Gorguts and fake Death just under a month ago). It proves that I'm really fed up with stadium concerts: perhaps it's me who has become less intense over time, but evidently, what matters most to me now is the contact with the artist.
And it's strange to think that one of the performances I enjoyed most this year was by a band I've never been crazy about: I'm not a die-hard fan of Obituary, not even in their heyday, finding them often lengthy. Yet, while waiting for their entrance on stage, I was strangely electrified, curious, knowing that our dear ones would put on the show I strongly needed at that moment. However, a few words must be said before about Tossic, who opened the show: for anyone wanting to know more about this historic band from Pisa, I refer you to my review of one of their concerts from a few years ago, which you can find right here; impressions from tonight will be almost identical. I just want to add that "Cazzi di pane" (great finale) is a great song with excellent lyrics, and seeing Mazza, graying and smiling, wandering around the stage with the bag for the proverbial throwing of the bread sticks at the audience, a ritual that has taken place for over twenty years to close Tossic concerts, almost moved me. Well done, bravo.
But let's move on to Obituary. I introduce them with a technical note: the fundamental pieces of the historical core survive, namely the Tardy brothers and Trevor Peres. However, it’s a pleasure to find a heavyweight bassist (in every sense) like Terry Butler by their side, who played with Death during the "Leprosy" era (not just some guy) and who continued his journey with Massacre: in short, another piece of death metal history. I don't know the other guitarist (who is not Ralph Santolla, who has been with the band for some years now), but I know he does his job very well, not even making us miss the legendary James Murphy, who illuminated the brutal art of the American band with his remarkable solos during the masterpiece “Cause of Death”.
Obituary is very effective live, perhaps because they speak to us with a simple vocabulary: suspended between Celtic Frost and Slayer, they alternate slow and powerful passages with killer breaks with balance. But the beauty is that they do it outside of any sense of structure: in an Obituary song, it can easily be a few minutes before the voice appears, maybe the guitars churn out riffs for hefty portions of the single track, only to suddenly close after three or four slobbered verses (in the true sense of the word) by John Tardy. Or they can follow interminable codas in which nothing is done but quote "Hell Awaits" or "Jesus Saves". If all this seems predictable to you, I tell you that you are mistaken. Of course, we would never expect a samba interlude in an Obituary song, but I assure you that tonight all these successive “observations” in continuous and constant change are sublime. Listening to an Obituary song means that very rarely will you encounter a banal verse/chorus scheme; listening to an Obituary song means that you will be crushed by violence, suffocated by the heaviness of the riffs, but also teased by the various solutions that our dear ones love to condense into the canonical three/four/five-minute space that a piece of theirs can last. Attending one of their concerts, even for the most attentive fan, means recognizing portions of songs more than the songs themselves, which inevitably end up resembling each other: it means not rooting for one song over another, also because there isn’t much difference between the worst and best Obituary song. Hence the hour and a half stretches like a single extended suite. For me, the event takes on almost mystical contours: a mantra in which every now and then there are resounding highs, dictated by the reminiscences encrusted in the darkest part of memories (laughing and joking, I've been listening to Obituary for twenty years). We could say that if Slayer is a machine made to secrete violence, to hurt you, Obituary (who certainly won't caress you) live is a machine to make you enjoy.
So if it is in the whole that I appreciated the event, one cannot say that the classics were missing tonight. Apart from the inexplicable absence of "Don't Care," their hit par excellence (I remember that at the time a video of this song circulated on MTV), our dear ones mainly focus on the first three albums. And if "Slowly We Rot" is given the honor of opening and closing the dances (respectively with "Stinkupuss," the ideal opener with its first cadenced part, soon swept away by an adrenaline-pumping acceleration/solo – as if to say: "Here we are, we’re Obituary” – and the title-track, devastating as well as a worthy farewell to the evening), the greater space is granted to the two masterpieces "Cause of Death" and "The End Complete", from which over ten pieces are drawn, which is practically more than half of the resources fielded. Tear-jerking episodes from "Cause of Death" (particularly "Infected," with its majestic doom-filled introduction full of chilling solos, and "Chopped in Half," strong with its double-bass drum that grinds everything, but also "Body Bag" and "Turned Inside Out" are no joke), while for "The End Complete", the killer sequence with which they are consecutively re-proposed, "Back to One" (another unsuspected classic), "Killing Time," the title-track, and "Dead Silence" (in the encore, the unavoidable "I'm in Pain" will also be reproposed) is simply murderous. I can't tell you much about their recent production, considering that I abandoned the band in 1994 (at the time of "World Demise," from which I don’t think they repeated anything), but certainly, even these post-reunion tracks (including the presentation of an unreleased track that will appear on the upcoming album) have a decent pull, not at all disfiguring alongside the older pieces.
Impeccable performance from all five musicians, particularly impressive is Donald Tardy's performance on the drums: precise as a metronome, strong in blast-beats as much as surgical in tempo changes, he is the true driving force behind these abyssal sessions. Apart from some initial uncertainty, even his brother John (I don’t understand what physical flaw makes him not imposing – maybe the small head compared to the body and particularly to the huge basket of hair, maybe a bit of a belly) behaves well behind the microphone, unleashing on the audience those beastly screams that have been the group’s fortune. But it is the musicians' behavior that makes the performance surreal: John Tardy occasionally disappears from the small stage to stand next to the drums, often imitating his brother’s percussion moves; they all then mysteriously gather around the drum kit between pieces to whisper, leaving the audience orphaned of an entertainer.
These unusual behaviors, together with all the previously described, have made this a great evening of extreme music atypical. That those from the old-school death metal were professionals was known (these excellent musicians devoted to brutality rarely disappoint live); what Obituary taught us tonight, however, is that death metal is not just about merciless beating but also inventiveness, irrationality, pursuit and development of ideas and visions.
Honor and glory to the old school.
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