Obituary and the Xecutioner's Return

They’ve only released slightly more than half-a-dozen albums during the past two decades, but in the case of death metal legends Obituary, quality definitely trumps quantity. The band’s early catalog – albums like Slowly We Rot (1989) and Cause Of Death (1990) – virtually defined the entire death metal genre, from the band’s radical use of down-tuned guitars and Sabbath-strength riffs to their lightning-fast thrashy fretwork and instrumental time changes. Obituary helped put the state of Florida on the death metal map while inspiring a legion of followers like Malevolent Creation, Morbid Angel and others that exploded in their wake. By the mid-90s, however, the death metal crown had been wrested from any US/UK contenders by a bunch of snot-nosed Scandinavian kids weaned on Obituary and Death albums.

After nearly a decade of inactivity, Obituary came roaring back in 2005 with the powerful Frozen In Time. The band sounded exactly as if it had, indeed, been “frozen in time,” Rip Van fuckin’ Winkle returning from a deep drugged sleep, the album an incredible throwback to the glory days of late-80s/early-90s death metal. Now that most of us have since caught our breath from the knockout punch that was Frozen In Time, the band hits the street hard with Xecutioner’s Return, its second collection of slaughterhouse tunes in a mere two years. Harkening back to the band’s original name – Xecutioner – the reformed Obituary’s latest album kicks out even more of their trademark charnelhouse churn-n-burn for their adoring fans.

No compromise, no surrender may as well be Obituary’s credo, for Xecutioner’s Return offers the listener no place to hide from the sonic onslaught. Damn near every song hits your tender ears like a ragged-edged razor slicing effortlessly through a roadkill carcass. John Tardy’s vocals have been reduced to a feral growl, a mythological man-wolf barking at demons that only he can see, while guitarists Trevor Peres and Ralph Santolla (from Iced Earth and Millenium) wield their axes like weapons: electroshocking you with rapidfire, crystalline fretboard runs one minute, bludgeoning you with massive doomy riffage the next. The rhythm department of bassist Frank Watkins and drummer Donald Tardy pound your frontal lobe relentlessly, like the business end of a big truck’s cold steel fender, and then they back up and run over your sorry ass again!

Metal mavens searching for the “next big thing” won’t find it here, nor will you find advances on the form as provided by bands like Meshuggah, Nile or Mastodon. What you will find is an old-school death metal romp as only the guys that go by the name of Obituary could deliver. Seldom have four otherwise gentile chaps made music this elemental, this malevolent, this frightening…. (Candlelight Records)

(Click on the CD cover to buy Xecutioner's Return from Amazon.com)