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)

The Kings of Death-N-Roll Return!

I swear, I put this thing on the box and sparks started flyin' like ball lightning. The low bass kicked in, bouncing off my head like a concrete police baton and then the guitars - those damn guitars - started to shred my eardrums like a hungry carnivore tearing into a hot meal. Yeah, verily, I speak of the mighty Entombed, Swedish purveyors of black noise most disturbing and yet alluring. Serpent Saints is the hallowed band’s new album, a return to the magnificent metal onslaught of 2003’s Inferno and a gut-busting, liver-shaking, migraine-injecting exercise in tension in its own right.

Serpent Saints kicks off with the title track, a deceptive bit of hallucinogenic, hypnotic six-string noodling leading the listener down a dark path on a rainy night, the drums kicking in like thunderstorms on the horizon…and then L.G. Petrov’s werewolf-like vocals kick in and the guitars assault your ears like a concussion grenade. Serpent Saints and its follow-up, Masters Of Death, both flex the band’s thrash muscles, getting good and limber to better drop to the ground and limbo dance across Thy Kingdom Come and Amok’s low-frequency, bass-heavy doom-like soundscapes.

If the first four of the ten monster tracks on Serpent Saints haven’t caused you to wet your bed and dive beneath the mattress in horror, wait until yer hungry lobes get snatched up by the razor-sharp fishhook of Warfare Plague Famine Death, a tasteful tune straight outta the Four Horsemen’s fakebook, the wiry, tense, demonic six-string pyrotechnics scatting around your cranium like a thousand bloodsucking locusts. Yowsa!

The Dead, The Dying, And The Dying To Be Dead is an impressive cross between Sabbath-inspired riff-laden doom and classic Entombed death-n-roll, with galloping drumbeats, bass to beat you over the head with, disturbing fretwork and lyrics so angry one wonders why Petrov’s head doesn’t burst into flames when he sings ‘em….

Love Song For Satan is just plain ooky-spooky, cult voices heard beneath a fog of ambience when the song goes all scratchy and industrial with backwards vox and arcane refrains and found sounds and metallic crashing and, well, you’ll certainly be headed for hell in a handbasket of your own weaving if you listen to closely to this song, kiddies…and I’ll see you there!

Entombed has often been criticized by notoriously tight-minded death metal fanatics for the band’s frequent experimentation in other less…shall we say…metallic endeavors. The result is always the same, however – the band takes a trip down a stylistic side street of its choosing, expands its musical palette, and returns to metal with its batteries recharged and its instruments set on stun, stomp and blister.

After their intriguing (and enjoyable) dalliance with classical ballet forms on Unreal Estate, Entombed has eagerly jumped headfirst back into the abyss with Serpent Saints, an album every bit as stone-crushingly powerful as anything these talented Swedes have ever recorded. (Candlelight Records USA)

(Click on the CD cover to buy Serpent Saints from Amazon.com)