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Obituary/Darkest Day
Obituary is like a loud and brutal pair of comfortable slippers. Nothing they do is particularly cutting edge; their music doesn’t push the envelope or try to shatter the parameters of thrash/death metal. That doesn’t really matter though because Obituary constantly put out albums worth listening to and their new studio offering “Darkest Day” is no exception. Everything you want from Obituary is present and accounted for including cool riffs, barking vocals, solos, double bass, the works. Obituary knows what their fans want and they deliver every time.
That’s one way of looking at Obituary’s new album, the other is that it and they are boring and repetitious. Darkest Day starts out with a chugging riff and then goes into another one and another one and another one. Dynamics don’t play a huge part in these songs, which begin to all sound the same about mid way through the album. There’s an intro riff, then the drums come in (sometimes….gasp…the drums start the song) and at some point the impossible to understand vocals will kick off. You might get a breakdown, usually there’s a solo and then the song’s done. The song titles aren’t even very clever, sticking with standard “metal” clichés like “Left To Die”, “Field Of Pain”, “List Of The Dead” and others. Nothing here rises about the factory nature of heavy metal and Obituary don’t even attempt to try anything new or exciting.
The thing about Obituary is that both of those ideas are correct, it depends on who you are and what you’re looking for. Nothing on “Darkest Day” is bad but nothing on the album is particularly memorable. If you love Obituary and this kind of death metal is what you live for then you’ll be in love with this album. The riffs are huge, the album itself is heavy and chocked full of dark imagery. If that’s enough then this will be a head-banging favorite of yours for 2009. However if you’re looking for something that would transcend the genre you’ll be way out of luck.
If extreme music for you is the need to push limits, disturb people and try to expand the ideas of what can be done in the genre then skip right past Darkest Day. Obituary just isn’t that kind of band and they’re unapologetic about it. This is old school death metal even down to the way the album is recorded. Everything here is extremely compressed and high end, the bass is almost non-existent and each song covers the same ground varying only slightly in song structure and solo placement.
So what’s my opinion? To be honest this is the kind of album that’s the worst for me as a critic because I don’t care either way. Obituary isn’t making great music here but nothing on Darkest Day is offensive either. I’d never play this album again but that’s because my tolerance for these kinds of straight-ahead death metal albums has gotten low after so many years of them. If you’re looking to head bang in the Circle K parking lot on the weekends with a sixer and a pack of whippets then this album will be your bible. For me I need something that at least attempts to mix it up, which Darkest Day does not.
