OBITUARY — World Demise (review)

OBITUARY — World Demise album cover Album · 1994 · Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4.5/5 ·
Vim Fuego
Obituary were victims of their own success. With the stunning combination of a legendary debut, a follow up album which many rate better than the first, and a third album which was the highest selling Death Metal album of all time to that point, it was bound to come a little unstuck on the fourth album. There is nothing obviously wrong with 'World Demise'. It takes the raw brutality of 'Slowly We Rot', the Celtic Frost worship of 'Cause Of Death', and the clinical precision of 'The End Complete' to a new level. Everything Obituary made their name with is here - thunderous guitars, assault and battery of the drum kit and of course Donald Tardy's trademark vomitory death grunt. Obituary developed a very tight sound, which first became evident on 'The End Complete', and became fully operational here. A lot of the fuzzier, less distinct parts of Trevor Peres' rhythm guitar were sharpened up. Some of the charm of early Obituary was the fact it was recorded primitively, giving it a warm "feel". Crisper production and improvements in playing technique took a lot of that feel and character away from the band's sound. In its place is a more precise, colder, almost robotic feel, more synthetic than natural. Everything seems exact, deliberate, planned, and faultless. Many former fans were put off. What better than a mechanical sound for decrying pollution and industrialisation though? Opener ‘Don't Care’ and ‘Solid State’ particularly demand instant respect for exacting execution. Like an automated Orwellian nightmare, they stamp on your conscious mind remorselessly. Escaping the nightmare, ‘Final Thoughts’ explores the last flickers of neurons through the brain before you pull the trigger. Death Metal can be a very restrictive genre to work within. A lot of fans expect things to be exactly right, with little room for deviation. Obituary tried something a little different here. There are vocal samples mumbling away under a lot of the tracks. Who knows what they are saying, but the almost subliminal effect on the sound is engaging. Also, on final track ‘Kill for Me’, there are African tribal percussion samples. The loop adds an interesting percussive effect. It is unfortunate the band did not explore this avenue further. Time hasn't been terribly kind to this album. The first three are fondly remembered by most fans, but not this for some reason. It is really a continuation of and the obvious successor to 'The End Complete'. Perhaps death metal had finally progressed and caught up with where Obituary had been five years earlier.
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