A Review of the Album Slowly We Rot by American Death Metal Band Obituary

Obituary is one of the most famous American death metal bands that came onto the scene ages ago. I decided to give their music a chance once again after many failed attempts. Their 1989 debut album called Slowly We Rot is in terms of style very similar to the Florida death metal scene.

How is the title track of this album? That is a good question. It starts out slow and heavy and then it speeds up. Lyrically, the song and the album in general aren’t very pleasant at all. Obituary joins bands such as Cannibal Corpse and Avulsed being bands that have gory, grotesque lyrical content. But Obituary is one of those bands that have savage kind of lyrics and even if the title track is decent musically, the lyrics alone would cause the album to get a lower score than it normally would. Even the album’s title is so obvious. A body that is no longer alive would rot so why is the band even having a title like this to begin with?

When we get deeper into this album, even the song called “Words of Evil” the lead guitar is decent but it lacks that sort of wow factor. There’s good American death metal and then there is Obituary, a band that has ugly lyrics and tries too much to sound like the best Florida death metal band ever and that just fails and it is like the band falls down flat. Where are the excellent melodies? Sadly, there is little to be impressed about this album and this is the first album from Obituary which is considered to be one of the pioneers of the death metal scene. A pioneer in the death metal scene would need to set a good example musically for the genre and Obituary just fails to create anything halfway decent with this debut. This is the worst way for any band to start a career and it is amazing that this band has lasted over three decades. It is time for these guys to call it a career and just retire instead of releasing junk music like this.

Is there anything that is of redeeming quality about this album? Maybe the beginning of the first song is and even that has a sort of grotesque song title. If the album The Great Southern Trendkill by Pantera was the worst groovy thrash metal album ever released at the time that I wrote this but this album Slowly We Rot has to be the worst death metal album ever and what is even more staggering is that the album was released at a time when American death metal and thrash metal was at its peak. At this point, what kind of score should we even give the album called Slowly We Rot? It is a tough call because even the album’s title is so obvious that it is cheesy beyond what words can describe. The riffing in the title track is barely decent enough as it has a very heavy and somewhat progressive feel in one of its sections.

Final Score: 5 out of 100 points