Obituary

Obituary emerged from Tampa, Florida, as a veteran death metal outfit whose roots trace to the genre’s initial wave. Although personnel shifts occurred over time, three founding members—drummer Don Hardy, vocalist Tom Hardy, and guitarist Trevor Peres—have remained since 1986. Their initial recordings blended raw, lo-fi death metal with hardcore elements, and Tom Hardy’s shouted vocals stayed intelligible without printed lyrics, a trait that later reversed. The 1989 album Slowly We Rot and the 1990 follow-up Cause of Death crystallized the group’s signature chug-and-burn approach. After issuing Back from the Dead in 1997, the band entered an extended hiatus. A five-piece lineup reconvened to track Frozen in Time, released in 2004. Xecutioner’s Return arrived in 2007 and earned strong international notices, while Darkest Day surfaced in 2009. Inked in Blood appeared in 2014 and Obituary followed in 2017. Between 2020 and 2022 the group issued three live albums plus the single “A Dying World.” Relapse put out the full-length Dying of Everything in January 2023.

Possessed and Death helped birth death metal, yet Obituary shaped it into a lasting form. Recording demos as Xecutioner as early as 1986, the five-piece—comprising the Hardy Brothers, Peres, guitarist Allen West, and bassist Daniel Tucker—made its Obituary debut with Slowly We Rot in 1989, an album widely viewed as pivotal in the style’s development. Earlier explorations by those same acts, along with grindcore pioneers Repulsion and Napalm Death, had pushed Slayer’s Reign in Blood template toward unrelenting velocity and excess. Obituary instead introduced marked tempo shifts even at the peak of speed-metal popularity. Within individual tracks, West and Peres could drop the pace to funereal tempos while retaining crushing weight through downtuned guitars and John Tardy’s guttural delivery. The resulting Slowly We Rot exerted immediate influence on a wave of Florida death-metal acts including Morbid Angel, Deicide, Malevolent Creation, Cannibal Corpse, and countless later international bands. In doing so, it supplied the foundational blueprint that would distinguish death metal from both grindcore and black metal.

Subsequent releases such as Cause of Death (1990) and The End Complete (1992) also proved formative, yet 1994’s World Demise and 1997’s Back from the Dead drew cooler responses. After four years of nonstop touring, the members found themselves depleted both physically and artistically, leading to a split. Sporadic one-off reunions followed. Even while individual members pursued other projects—most prominently West’s successful tenure with Six Feet Under—Obituary retained its stature as a definitive death-metal act. Roadrunner’s 2001 live set Dead and the 2001 Anthology collection reinforced perceptions of a permanent breakup, as did the 2003 two-fer pairing Slowly We Rot with Cause of Death.

Unbeknownst to fans, the band had already begun studio work with bassist Frank Watkins. Those sessions produced Frozen in Time, issued in 2005. The widely praised Xecutioner’s Return arrived two years later without West, whose temporary replacement was Ralph Santolla, formerly of Millennium and Deicide. Darkest Day followed on Candlelight in 2009. After both Santolla and Watkins—who died of cancer in 2015—departed, the 2014 crowdfunded ninth album Inked in Blood introduced guitarist Kenny Andrews and bassist Terry Butler. The release performed strongly enough to mark Obituary’s first entry on the U.S. album charts. Two years later came Ten Thousand Ways to Die, pairing two new studio tracks with twelve live recordings. The single “No” and the Inked in Blood/Ten Thousand Ways two-fer preceded the self-titled tenth album in 2017. That record garnered broad critical approval for conveying renewed vitality and became the band’s second consecutive Top 200 entry in the United States while also reaching the Top 40 in six other countries. Extensive touring continued until the COVID-19 pandemic halted live activity in 2020. Taurus issued the archival Torture Chamber (Live 1992) that same year. Signing with Relapse in 2022, the band released Cause of Death: Live Infection and Slowly We Rot: Live & Rotting ahead of Dying of Everything’s January 2023 arrival. The cover artwork was painted by Polish artist Mariusz Lewandowski, who had passed away the previous July.