Slowly We Rot

Unlike most of the Florida bands that first defined death metal at the tail end of the ’80s, Obituary didn’t rely strictly on lightning speed. In fact, on songs like “’Til Death” and “Slowly We Rot,” they often sludged in the opposite direction, fabricating rigor mortis like the corpses John Tardy was barking and burping about. He sounds unbelievably malevolent, and between chainsaw guitar solos (check “Suffocation”) and double bass drums that actually roll, he gets all the wicked support he needs.

If death metal first came to life during the mid- to late '80s courtesy of bands like Florida's Death (Scream Bloody Gore), another Florida band, Obituary, brought it to fruition in 1989 with Slowly We Rot. These five guys took what groups like Death and the San Francisco Bay Area's Possessed had done to a new level of deathliness. The music of Obituary wasn't simply an extreme form of Slayer-esque speed metal with ghastly vocals; it was full-fledged death metal, with down-tuned guitar riffs of monstrous size, painful-sounding growls and moans for vocals, and distinct tempo changes that often brought the songs down to a lumbering doomy tempo rather relentlessly breakneck speeds à la thrash. These innovations don't seem so revolutionary now, given the innumerable death metal bands that arose during the '90s and beyond, to the point where the style practically burned itself out, spinning off into a variety of substyles.