OBITUARY - "DEAD" (ROADRUNNER)

Last autumn, Obituary recorded a live CD somewhere in the United States. What with me being quite an Obituary fan and all - their latest studio effort, "Back From the Dead", had also quite grown on me - I could not help but get it.

"Dead", recorded live, offers quite a few songs off that latest album, such as there are "Threatening Skies", "By the Light", "Rewind", "Download", "Platonic Disease" and "Back from the Dead", but several classics are present on the disc as well. These include "Cause of Death", "I'm in Pain", "Turned inside Out", "Slowly we Rot", and even my oldie favourite, "'Til Death". In total there are some 16 songs, clocking in at a little more than an hour.

What struck me right away was the difference with older recordings. When compared to the from-radio bootlegs of the 1992 Aardschokdag Festival, and 1991 Dynamo Open Air, was that the songs don't really lash out with energy anymore. This is especially valid for the older songs, with "Chopped in Half" reduced to an intro for "Turned Inside Out" for example. The later songs get across better, though.

In fact, you could see "Dead" as a kind of "best of" CD with added applause. The songs hardly differ from the studio versions (though Allen West now plays solos on most of the songs where originally there weren't any) and John Tardy doesn't really go much beyond announcements similar to "this is the title song of our new record, yes" and "how are you doing, OK, yes". And, of course, for the CD to be a real "best of", it would have required the presence of "Body Bag" and "Words of Evil"…

A pretty cool CD, but not necessary.

RK

Written May 1998

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