### Obituary: World demise

#### 04/01/13 || Sokaris

Last time I reviewed an Obituary album I forced an uncomfortable amount of nostalgia on you, dear reader. We’re going down memory lane again, so pee now because we’re not stopping until we reach our destination.

I remember back when you’d have to spend an hour downloading a music video that would take up about a third of your monitor. Your low resolution, fat in the ass monitor. And god forbid anyone picked up the phone to make a call, they’d be greeted by an ungodly digital squawk. While they cringed at the precursor to today’s dubstep, you’d be back to byte one, sentenced to re-download. This was before streaming media actually streamed and when I was young enough to actually care about music videos.

Anyway, I happened upon a video featuring a handful of long-haired dudes skulking through a field, playing some groovy death metal while images of pollution, industry and children playing in dirty water (juxtaposition!) flash by. The band was, of course, Obituary and the song was “Don’t care.”

Allen West, the McKayla Maroney of metal, continued his decades long uninterrupted streak of looking bored by his surroundings…

…while Frank Watkins soldiers through the video shoot despite having come down with a bad case of the 90’s.

That song really spoke to me, I could connect to its simple hook and growl along to the chorus easy enough. Though looking back it kind of sounds like a slightly heavier version of a professional wrestler’s entrance music.

That’s the thing with nostalgia, she’s kind of a deceptive bitch. Dusting off “World demise” I expected the sounds from the album to match the memory I had of this being greatest shit ever because it happened to be among the first death metal that clicked with me. The album focuses on the bouncy, moshy Obituary and forsakes most of the thrashy bits and sinister passages that swarmed through the early albums. The riffing is good, though the song structures are quite repetitive, but the narrowing of an already straightforward sound leaves the songs with almost nowhere to go. Mid-paced head-nodder guitar line goes into mid-paced head-nodder guitar line, afraid to stray too much or throw out any challenging developments. There’s just not justification for fifty minutes of this. The album’s duration is really baffling considering its lengthier than any of the band’s other 90’s albums but in the end contains less material to work with.

Though the majority of this review has been negative thus far I’m not trying to paint this album as dull or weak, just that its a step down from The end complete (which was a step down from Cause of death) and is the kind of album Obituary fans can definitely enjoy, though you can be forgiven for stopping the album before its over. Keepers include the opener I babbled about way too long, the title track, “Redefine”, “Solid state” and “Final thoughts” in particular. A little fat-cutting and a decent dose of speed would’ve brought this up to classic status but as is “World demise” is a fairly strong, if unspectacular time capsule of the end of death metal’s first wave. Unfortunately for Obituary a new generation of bands would carry the genre much further than they would and plenty of veteran bands kept a higher caliber of quality than the ex-Executioners.

- Information
- Released: 1994
- Label: Roadrunner Records
- Website: www.obituary.cc
- Band
- John Tardy: vocals
- Allen West: guitars
- Trevor Peres: guitars
- Frank Watkins: bass
- Donald Tardy: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Don’t care
- 02. World demise
- 03. Burned in
- 04. Redefine
- 05. Paralyzing
- 06. Lost
- 07. Solid state
- 08. Splattered
- 09. Final thoughts
- 10. Boiling point
- 11. Set in stone
- 12. Kill for me