Obituary - Ten Thousand Ways To Die

Obituary are the one and only - the masters who crafted death metal from a flickering furnace and still unleash some of the most ferocious music you will ever hear. Ten Thousand Ways To Die is a nifty release, it showcases all sides of obituary, with two new singles followed up by twelve live classics. It's a look at the future of the band accentuated by taking a moment to look back at the past. Obituary are legends for a reason, and the onslaught that these Tampa Bay pioneers deliver simply never gets old.

The two new songs themselves, Loathe and Ten Thousand Ways To Die are solid Obituary fare. They play off the traditional polemic of the band and have that same brutal and grinding sense of chaos behind them. There is something strangely refreshing about hearing new Obituary in 2016 and it burns its way into your brain. That being said, hearing live tracks from their 2015 tour is a surprisingly fun treat. It reflects the graphic magic that has made this band a favorite for so long. The bloodthirsty joy with which the band assaults their fans is palatable. Ten Thousand Ways To Die proves that Obituary are still gods among men.

This is all you could want from Obituary, new music, groovy riffs, sickening art and punishing growls. The band has distilled their very essence into this record and it's impossible to turn away. Ten Thousand Ways To Die cracks skulls from back to front. Sure there may have been many waves of death metal between now and the bands classic period but that doesn't take away from what Obituary have always done - pulverized their fans. This is an album you can jam again and again, because above all else, Obituary understand death metal.

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At the Gates Interview : Track-by-track guide to "At War with Reality" with Tomas Lindberg (Pt.2/3)

For those of you that might’ve missed out on the 1^st part of this interview (link: http://tinyurl.com/o2f6yth), earlier this month I was granted the opportunity to catch up with At the Gates on their tour promoting their latest record, titled “At War with Reality”. For the 2^nd part of this interview, I decided to some time to go through a track-by-track breakdown of the record. As some of you might’ve noticed already, I happen to be a big fan of concept albums, and considering the fact that one of my favorite bands’ latest record happens to be one, I could not help but jump on the occasion to discuss and dive into more detail into the twisted subject matter behind the albums’ lyrics.

1. El Altar Del Dios Desconocido
The spoken word section is a quote from one of these writers I talked about before.
-Ernesto Sabato, right?
Exactly, Ernesto Sabato, this guy (points to the photo on his cap with a large smile). It's from a book called On Heroes and Tombs, which is also kind of similar to one of our song titles on the record. It's really about one of the character in the book trying to find his own way to the concept of "God": "if God exists, what is it?" and stuff like that. It's like this whole questioning and cynical way of looking at the world that really declares the style of the record. We really wanted it to be recited in its native language and to create a really disturbing soundscape around it. So we got the guy who did the intro for "Blinded by Fear" back in the day to do the intro for us, together with our friend Anton (Reisenegger) of Lock Up and Pentagram to do the spoken-word part. He's from Chile, so he's got a somewhat similar way of speaking Spanish as in Argentina.

2. Death and the Labyrinth
- The title comes from a book by Michel Foucault, right?
Exactly! His only book on literary criticism. Most people know him as more of a philosopher dealing with the structures of power and other stuff that are also very interesting, I've studied a lot of that before. This, however, deals with his way of approaching how language is a way of perceiving reality and how we create reality with language. That's kind of what this song is about. He had one example in that book but I kind of made into a general thing. The song is sort of a declaration of the concept. The reference to the book is intentional so that you can go further and find out for yourself. That's the whole thing with the record, that's another thing that these writers had in South America in the 60s' and 50s': a lot of stuff references to other books. In one of Sabato's books, Jorge Luis Borges appears in the book, talking as a character. They make a lot of these references all the time, which makes it more fun.

3. At War with Reality
The title track is sort of in the continuation of the previous one. “Death and the Labyrinth” is the introduction to the concept of the record and “At War with Reality” points down and says "THIS is the concept of the record", that's what the song says. It explains the idea of breaking down our perception of reality and trying to understand other perceptions of reality and going further from there. There's a lot of naivety in the world and that's what we are at war with really, this western Eurocentric world view. We really want to strike against that, so the title-track is the declaration of the concept behind the record.

4. The Circular Ruins
That’s the title of a short story by Jorge Luis Borges. I started with his basic ideas, namely his criticism against modern man and how we use technology to sort of "play God". It's a very weird, nightmarish kind of novel, so I took that concept and then applied it into the modern world to refer to what we're doing today with all of this new technology such as gene manipulation and whatnot. Every song has a similar concept, only with a different twist on it.

5. Heroes and Tombs
That's basically what Sabato was doing with his book, and I tried to do that with another layer on top of it. It deals with the superficial state of mankind today, how we're focused on all of these materialistic values, how society's become very plastic and how deeper values disappear from our agenda completely. Sabato was calling humanity "a cancer" at this point in his life. It's almost like a punk, hardcore lyric! (laugh) Only it's more abstract.
-Do you feel like this is a song you could've written for At the Gates back in the 90's?
I couldn't have done it back then because I wasn't that mature (laugh). The words I'm using and the style of writing are similar to the abstract symbolism of the early records, but now it's grounded in real philosophical theories. So it's wider but it's also more... "brainy" I guess...? (laugh) Or Nerdy! It's more nerdy! (laugh) So that’s' why I couldn't understand these kinds of concepts when I was 20. Other than that, the subject matter is the same kind of idea I guess, yeah.

6. Conspiracy of the Blind
It's also from this book On heroes and Tombs. One of the main characters has a conspiracy about the blind people taking over the world. He has very nightmarish visions about this and he starts this investigation, following blind people around... It's very twisted but of course there is a social comment behind it, and that’s' what I'm trying to do with this song as well. It's symbolic, with blindness referring to being blind to the truth. We are the conspiracy makers, but we are in on the conspiracy because we want to believe it. 

7. Order from Chaos
Order from Chaos is kind of like a sister-song to "The Circular Ruins", the continuation of it. There's a line saying "The Circular Ruins" in that song as well, it references back to that short story and whereas "The Circular Ruins" is more based on the actual novel, this one is more of an At the Gates comment on the novel. They really work together in that way.

8. The Book of Sand
This one is from a novel by Jorge Luis Borges. Borges really liked writing about literature; The library of Babel is one of his books as well. This novel is about a book that never ends, and it has a lot of references to that modern society he was living in, but brought in the idea of information overload that we have today and the questioning as to what is reality, what is true, what is information, and how these 3 interact together. I made it into a subplot to the novel, with this book of sand being the internet in a way really: how we perceive reality through the internet and not only through our language anymore.

9. The Head of the Hydra / Language of the Dead
The lyrics to “The Head of the Hydra” and "Language of the Dead" (a bonus track to the record) were intertwined from the start and I made them into two songs in the end.  “The Head of the Hydra” goes back to the Greek legend of the hydra of course but there's also a novel by Carlos Fuentes called The Hydra Head. It's also about this comment about modern man and how, if we were to forget the meanings of words and language, would we come up with new names and would the world change because of it? It's play with your mind. I speak a lot about language in this song as well. If we were to revive a forgotten language would our lives change?

10. City of Mirrors (Instrumental)
The city of mirrors is basically about modern society of today and how we constantly want to perceive ourselves through others, through media, through the internet, social media...

11. Eater of Gods
Eater of Gods goes back to the intro track, with this guy trying to create his own "God" concept and understand different concepts of God. In the intro there's the part that says that if God exists he's the devil, a bastard and this track is about his fight against his own personal concept of God that he grew up with.

12. Upon Pillars of Dust
Pillars of Dust are actually an astronomical phenomenon. It’s one of the few songs that deal with the general philosophical concept; with reality resting upon pillars of dust, which isn’t very stable. It's a metaphor for that. I really believe that we could really break down these barriers, not in the near future but we are starting to see the cracks. Maybe civil war breaking out in America... You can see stuff happening too, like the Arab spring for example. If you just look back a couple of centuries into the past, Europe wasn't how we want to remember it as, you know? We like to think that it's always been like this, but it hasn't. Reality is always changing and it's not as safe as we think.

13. The Night Eternal
This one is actually one of the few songs that doesn't really have so much to do with the concept, only it was written in the same style. It's being written from the perspective of a soldier from the Spanish civil war actually, that was the idea of the whole song. It's about being desperate and seeing something you firmly believe in torn away. That was the feeling I wanted to get across with that song. But there's also the idea that those beliefs are still stronger than the death of one person. The Spanish civil war has become somewhat of a symbol to me for struggle for civil rights, against fascist oppression and stuff like that. It's one of the best examples of how quickly we have forgotten about it. The fugitives from the Spanish civil war weren't let into France by the French and the British sent weapons to Franco. People have forgotten about this and it's being swept under the carpet. That kind of feeling was something I wanted to get across with this song. So in a way, this one strays away a little from the concept of the record but its’ written in the same perspective and with the same philosophy as the others.

Interview by Robin Ono

Interview with Tomas Lindberg

Part I: http://tinyurl.com/o2f6yth

Be sure to check the rest of the photos of the show on our facebook page at:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Two-Guys-Metal-Reviews/120456451348727

PS : A huge thank you goes out toTomas Lindberg, Martin Marx for her amazing work as well as to Deborah and the rest of the Rockhal staff for their incredible hospitality, without which this interview would've been possible.

At the Gates
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At the Gates in Luxemburg (@Rockhal, 06/06/2015)

After being granted the opportunity to interview the great Steven Wilson a few months back, last week marked my second trip to my home-country of Luxemburg this year, yet again for the purpose of covering an equally exciting and important act. Hailing from the port city of Gothenburg in Sweden, At the Gates are a band that need little to no introduction, as they are quite simply the pionneers of the city's renouned "Gothenburg sound", having laid the groundwork for essentially the entire forthcoming generation of modern metal acts that emerged after the bands' first disbandment back in 1996. Needless to say, the news of the bands' first appearance on Luxemburgish soil came off as both a delightful surprise and an event I had no intention on missing out on. So off I went and there I was, impatient and excited to see one of my favorite metal acts tear it up.

Opening up for the band were yet another familiar act: the local melodic death metal act known as Miles to Perdition, a band whose career I've had the opportunity to follow fairly closely, since their inception coincides with the period during which I first started going to live concerts in the first place. As a result, this might have very well been the 4th if not 5th show I've seen them play.
Right off the bat, the first thing that struck me as the band started off their set was the sound level. It might just be that I had been going to exceptionnally loud live shows lately (I'm looking at you, Pallbearer), but the sound level seemed to be significantly tamer, in a fairly good way.
The overall sound of the performance however wasn't all too flattering though, with the guitars and bass blending together in an undecipherable mush rather than sitting in their respective spaces in the frequency spectrum and with the tiny and clicky drum sound further adding to the bitterness of the sound. Now I'll be honest, I regret to say that, despite my strive towards promoting bands from the local scene, I have never been a fan of Miles to Perdition. The songs came and went one after the other, and I hate to say this, but all that I took from them were a succession of riffs glued together without any hooks nor semblance of coherence or structure.
Performance-wise, it pains me to say that the band didn't seem to be in top form that night either, for the first words that pop into my mind to describe their performance would be "fairly sloppy".
I truly wish this band the best of luck, for I wish nothing more than to see a stronger metal scene in Luxemburg. I know I'm not doing myself any favor nor making myself any friends by speaking my mind, was a surprisingly disappointing performance. Sorry guys.

After a rather short intermission, the lights then dimmed down to pave the way for our headlining act to step to the stage to the sounds of El Altar Del Dios Desconocido, the introductory track to their recently released comeback album At War with Reality for which they are on tour promoting. Jumping straight to business as is custom with an At the Gates show, the band kicked their set off with the frenetic Death and the Labyrinth, a blood pumping set opener. Considering the bands' legendary status and the rarity of their live performances, I was very surprised to see how static the audience stayed throughout the entirety of the show. For a band headlining most of every major metal festival they get booked at, the reception was exceptionnally calm... Could this be the first ever At the Gates show without a wild pit raging all throughout? As soon as the first song ended, the band followed things up with the classic string-skipping introductory riff to Slaughter of the Soul, causing a roar of satisfaction from the front row of the audience. As with every song off of that iconic album, vocalist Tomas "Tompa" Lindberg was aided by a front row of fans screaming along to every verse and every chorus. The setlist for the night consisted of a hybrid between the bands' reunion show setlist and tracks off of the new record, with Slaughter of the Soul being played almost in its entirety and a few older songs being replaced with some of the newest ones. Old-school fans and newer fans alike were treated to a great mix of songs bound to win each respective fan to another side of the bands' discography. I, for one, was ever so pleased to hear some of the bands' older songs pumped up with the vitality and sound quality they deserved back in the day, and I was also very impressed as to how well the newer tracks fit in with the rest of the songs. Rather than simply attempting to measure up and compare to Slaughter of the Soul, the newer tracks added a very natural sense of progression to the bands' sound while at the same time alluding to the more sinister vibes of the band' back catalog.

The sound was a bit louder than for Miles to Perditions' set and (thankfully) way clearer, making up for a reasonnable live sound this time around. While greeted to a fairly tough crowd for the likes of their stature, Tomas proved to be fairly up to task when I came to warming up the venue with his effervescent stage presence and his superb interaction with his audience.
As the band returned to the stage for the encore, the band was thankfully treated to a bit of action in the pit during the classic Blinded by Fear. The night ended off with Kingdom Gone, followed by the satisfying closure marked by The Night Eternal, the closing track to their latest record.

Luxemburg does pass off as a place with one-of-a-kind metal scene at times. While the relatively lukewarm reception does set this show appart from the other 2 shows I've seen At the Gates play, there's simply nothing that will take anything away from the bands' terrific performance tonight. A splendid show well worth the trip.

Photos by Martine Marx.

Be sure to check the rest of the photos of the show on our facebook page at:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Two-Guys-Metal-Reviews/120456451348727

Robin.

PS : A huge thank you goes out to Martin Marx for her amazing work as well as to Tomas Lindberg, to Deborah and the rest of the Rockhal staff for their incredible hospitality, without which neither this article nor the interview would've been possible.

Miles to Perdition
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At the Gates
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Morbid Vomit - Return to the Crypts

One thing that always kind of charmed me about death metal is how it is prone to flights of fancy. I mean - the music can remain visceral and brutal, but there is definitely an element of silliness that can be found in record like Return to the Crypts by Morbid Vomit. Incredibly vicious and deliciously vile Morbid Vomit rage from bottom to top and tear out throats until you can't handle them anymore. There is a wonderful charm to their skull crunching brand of old school death metal. You feel yourself being rammed into a wall  and held there, suffocated until you give up, a slave to the almighty groove. A highlight of the work for me is the power of the growls, they invoke an old school evil that doesn't really surface these days. Morbid Vomit get the triumphant evil of death metal and they also understand how ridiculous it can be at times. Wonderfully self aware and deliciously goring these buzzing Finnish maniacs will keep you listening for hours on end!

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Obituary in Paris w/M-pire of Evil, Dust Bolt, Rotting Repugnancy (@Le Divan du Monde, 29/01/2015)

Following the release of their latest, crowd-funded album, Obituary was back with a vengeance last Thursday for an unmissable night for any old-school death metal fan. I, for one, being the death metal aficionado that I am, could not have been more excited to finally catch these death metal icons. Opening up the festivities for the evening were no less than 3 bands, each of them offering a different take on heavy music, making up for a nicely balanced line-up. Within this lineup of opening bands (of which all of them were completely unknown to me) were some duds as well as some pretty pleasant surprises.

Kicking off the show was the Midlands based UK death metal band Rotting Repugnancy, whose set I will quickly skim to talk about the following bands. While there wasn't anything inherently wrong with the bands' brand of brutal death metal, I honestly didn't find much appeal in watching their set. There were a couple of groovy riffs here and there but for the most part I wasn't all that convinced. One could easily tell these were competent musicians, which leads me to suspect that the overall sound of their set was to blame. Being well aware that this is death metal that we're talking about, I found the guitar sound to be a little too muddy for its own good and lacking a bit of precision and crunch to give it a "fuller" sound.

Next up was a fresh new band from Germany, playing for the first time in Paris but visibly with the intention of not making it their last. As soon as the sound checking was done, Dust Bolt rushed to the stage and immediately made the jump to light speed with their insanely energetic crossover and thrash-revival sound. Visibly drawing inspiration from bands like D.R.I, Municipal Waste and Suicidal Tendencies, these young-bloods blasted off with an insane amount of energy, running across the stage, waving their instruments around like passionate musicians living the dream. These musicians, fueled with such pure passion and energy, visibly won over their audience that night and effectively managed to give a good deal of them a strong appetite for some friendly violent fun in the pit. If there is one lesson to be learned from this set, it would be that Thrash is definitely not dead, and that so long as we have passionate musicians and passionate fans, thrash will never die. Going all-in for their first Parisian show, Dust Bolt left the stage with some well-deserved praise, having effectively conquered some new territory through their musicianship well-deserving of an upcoming headlining set.

Up next on the bill was a band whose name visibly did not strike a chord for a good deal of us but whose members obviously did. M-pire of Evil, formerly known as Primevil, is an old-school speed metal act from Newcastle founded by ex-members of the genre-defining band Venom, including its founding guitarist Mantas. For anyone wondering where the magic of Venom went after their now-classic first three albums, look no further: Mantas and his team kept the essence and spirit from the early days of Venom and have been touring and writing music under this grossly unrecognized new name and new formation. It somewhat saddens me to know that such creative potential resurfaces only now, since such a band would have probably gotten a lot more recognition and influence, had they formed during the time when Venom and thrash metal was at its peak. Tony Dolan, having replaced Cronos in Venom for nearly 15 years, still was at the top of his game, as was Mantas. M-pire of Evils' set mostly consisted of classic Venom songs, with occasionally a couple of new original songs blended into the setlist. With the exception of a few sound issues that were quickly solved, this set was an incredible treat and an amazing surprise for any heavy metal enthusiast.

Finally it was time for Obituary to play the evening off. As silly as it may sound, I was pleased to find that guitarist Trevor Peres was still rocking his Stratocaster and that frontman John Tardys' passion for camo shorts had not died out after all these years. The band started off their set with the song "Century of Lies" and "Visions in my head" off of their latest album "Inked in Blood", off of which they will be playing the most songs alongside their classic debut album "Slowly we rot". Another great surprise was the presence of lead guitarist Kenny Andrews handling the solos, considering that the bands' previous show in Paris had been as a 4 piece. While not crucial, the presence of a lead guitarist did make for a nice addition.

For the next hour-and a half to 2 hours, the crowd went absolutely insane, turning the venue into a full-on death metal warzone for the entirety of the set. John Tardys' instantly recognizable howling screams certainly haven't aged a bit, and neither did any of Obituarys' classic 2-beat thrash grooves and their ever-so-crushing mid-tempo riff breaks.

In short, Thursday evening was an incredibly enjoyable evening, with some great opening acts and a top-quality performance from Obituary, who still live up to their reputation. Relying on their simple yet effective formula for nearly 3 decades now, these death metal veterans know all about consistency and doing what they do best.

Robin

PS: A special thanks goes to the guys from Garmonbozia booking and Relapse records for making this review possible!

Rotting Repugnancy

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Dust Bolt

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M-pire of Evil

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http://www.mpireofevil.com/

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Obituary

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http://www.obituary.cc/

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Obituary setlist:

1. Centuries of Lies

2. Visions In My Head

3. Infected

4. Intoxicated

5. Bloodsoaked

6. Immortal Visions

7. 'Til Death

8. Don't Care

9. Violence

10. Stinkupuss

11. Back to One

12. Dead Silence

  ____________________

13. Back on Top

14. Inked In Blood

15. I'm in Pain

16. Slowly We Rot