Obituary

Live at The Observatory

Santa Ana, California

March 25th, 2017

Review and Photos by Travis Baumann

Obituary are one of the founding fathers of Death Metal. Forming in 1984 and hailing out of Florida, for over thirty years they have been releasing and performing their style of aggressive Metal music.

Currently touring in support of their latest self-titled release and as part of Decibel Magazine's 6th annual outing, they come to Santa Ana with the mighty Kreator.

Founded by the Tardy brothers, John on vocals and Donald on drums, they are joined by fellow long-time member Trevor Peres on rhythm guitar as well as more recent additions with Terry Butler on bass guitar and Kenny Andrews on lead guitar.

They opened the set with "Internal Bleeding" from their classic release, "Slowly We Rot". The sold out crowd were here in force and were ready to rumble, the pit accelerating immediately and crowd surfers coming over the barrier.

Keeping it old school, they played "Chopped in Half" and "Turned Inside Out" from the "Cause of Death" album as pretty much one song. "Visions in My Head" off of "Inked In Blood" marked the first song from the last few years, which found equal footing in audience enthusiasm and participation.

"Find the Arise" and "'Til Death" went way back to the beginning, fueling the oldest of the fans but plenty of the younger members of the crowd have done their homework and sang along with the old guard.

"Don't Care" hit the mid-set mark with the sole track from "World Demise" before the band indulged in two new songs back to back with "Sentence Day" and the awesome, "Ten Thousand Ways to Die."

They closed out the set with the classic song off their debut album of the same name, "Slowly We Rot". Their set list most definitely favored the back catalog but it was intense and energetic, reminding everyone why they are one of the more renowned Death Metal bands still to this day.

This was my first time seeing Obituary live and I have to say, while I have always enjoyed them on album, they really shine live and made a bigger fan out of me than when I walked through the doors this night. It was a really good show and I look forward to re-listening to their releases while remembering this awesome performance..

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