Obituary: Frozen Alive Reviews

As the harbingers of the death metal musical style - and thus, the forerunners of such bands as Cannibal Corpse, Malevolent Angel and Morbid Creation - Obituary formed in the mid-late eighties, when John Tardy, Trevor Peres, Allen West and others pulled it from the decaying remains of the band Xecutioner and issued the groundbreaking Slowly we Rot on the Roadrunner label c. 1989. An exercise in unbridled excess - gleefully assaultive lyrics and snarling vocals obsessed with putrefaction, torture, pain and dismemberment - Slowly became a massive hit and attained a massive degree of notoriety on the metal scene, given the band's idiosyncratic ability to dramatically vary their tempos within a piece - leading many music critics to type the effort as "prototypical death metal." The group's pair of successive LPs - 1990's Cause of Death and 1992's The End Complete - also made a splash on the metal scene. The band split in the mid-1990s, but reunited periodically thereafter. Now, in the home video release Obituary: Frozen Alive features the group performing before a packed concert hall in Poland with old and new songs. Selections include: "Rain", "Redneck Stomp," "On the Floor," "Insane," "Chopped in Half," "Turned Inside Out," "Dying," "Internal Bleeding" (with the famous "Internal Bleeding" intro), "Back to One," "Find the Arise," "Back Inside," "Threatening Skies," "By the Light," "Kill for Me" (with the "Kill for Me" intro), "Solid State," "Stand Alone," "Back from the Dead," "Lockjaw," "Slow Death," "'Til Death," and "Slowly We Rot." As a bonus, the release packs in the music videos for "Insane" and "On the Floor", several documentaries on the band, and interviews with band members. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi