Being Dead – 42%
Hames_Jetfield, March 25th, 2023
The jump towards much less extreme types of metal turned out to be quite temporary for Obituary. Shortly after the release of “World Demise”, the Tardy brothers and co. decided to return to the earlier direction of playing death metal, which will not have much in common with groove metal style or sampled additions. So they decided to focus on what they knocked down the audience in the early 90s, i.e. they went back to the vibes (and successes) of “The End Complete” – an album that was sold in a record circulation of approx. 300,000. pieces. And everything would be fine, if not for the fact that “Back From The Dead” was released in 1997, at a time when this type of coarse death metal generally enjoyed really small interest.
On their fifth album, the Americans from Obituary painfully learned how much the famous words nothing happens twice mean. Because on “Back From The Dead” the quintet really returned to death metal without major, modern additions (with a small exception – more on that later), but they didn’t quite manage to create such hype as before. No wonder, the first seconds of the album opening “Threatening Skies” make it clear how drastically the music of Obituary has lost its freshness, power and simple willingness to play. And unfortunately, it’s not any better in the next songs. Trevor and Donald play through most of the tracks on literally a few repetitive themes (i.e. simple riffing and trivial drum beats), Allen West’s solo performances appear relatively rarely, Frank’s bass is hidden tightly behind the guitars, the production doesn’t knock out at all (with a terribly irritating, dry sound of a snare), and John Tardy’s characteristic vocals, about which I praised before…are not able to attract for longer. The last of these, however, should not be particularly surprising here, after all, they are accompanied by an extremely boring background music. “Back From The Dead” is admittedly a generally consistent disc and does not cause much pain, but it does not engage you for the next listenings at all. Finally, in the bonus version, there was another serious slip-up in the form of “Bullituary” – a track with guest appearances by rappers Skinner T and Diablo D. Well, this is the thing with which it’s recommended to pretend that it did not happen on this album.
In this way, Obituary clearly showed how being on top (especially during “Slowly We Rot” and “Cause Of Death”) you can brutally fall off it. “Back From The Dead” is an album that couldn’t handle the weight of any of the previous four albums, both where the band proved itself in pure death metal, and in its groovy variety. On the other hand, you can hear the creative burnout and negligence with the compositions, just to have any pretext for the next tours. These, however, did not come, because despite its title, shortly after the release of “Back From The Dead” the group disbanded for 6 years.
Originally on A bit of subjectivism…in metal
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