BravePicks 2014 - OBITUARY's Inked In Blood #14
December 17, 2014, 10 years ago
Drum roll please … or maybe a hearty dose of blast-beats! Tis the season to commence the good, bad and ugly of 2014! Of course we’re talking about BravePicks 2014, where all the staff put their collective metal minds together to build the ultimate lists including individual Top 20s (new studio albums ONLY), Top 5 Brave Embarrassments, Top 3 Concerts, What/Who Needs To Stop In 2015? and Metal Predictions For 2015.
BravePicks 2014
14) OBITUARY - Inked In Blood (Relapse)
There’s a reason why we’ve gone over-the-top with coverage of Obituary’s latest slab of guttural Florida death metal majesty - it’s the scent from grave. A beautiful aroma of rotting corpses and haunting visions of a body ripped apart, both mentally and physically. Those are the feelings oozing like lava-flowing blood from a human body until you are drowning. It’s a bludgeoning mass of deathly delights, led by the punishers “Centuries Of Lies”, “Violent By Nature” and the machine-gun focus track “Visions In My Head” which contains the most addictive, moshing chorus line! But “Within A Dying Breed” shines a particular spotlight on Obituary in 2014, sharp as the beheading knife, the song changes paths into a swirling pit of echoing madness as the final rhythms and drums beats ensures the victim is out of their misery. The track is easily one of the most intelligently-written in their career. And Inked In Blood may be the best album to come barrelling out of the Relapse stable since Tales Of The Thousand Lakes!
Vocalist John Tardy told BraveWords scribe tht Obituary is hard-pressed to answer how the album compares to the band's others.
"It’s always hard for us to tell," says Tardy. "It’s like waking up every morning and looking at yourself in the mirror. You look the same every morning, but you go back and look at a photo that’s 30 years old, then you see the difference. We play our old music all the time, so to really hear the difference, it’s kind of hard for us."
Tardy points to the tune "Visions In My Head" as being one he's particularly proud of on the album, calling it "one of the most complete songs" the band has ever written and shows how much the band has progressed over the years, despite Obituary being, as I put it to him, "not the most progressive band in the world" (compliments, all).
"It just went together… and don’t get me wrong, we’re a bunch of cavemen, so how it came out, I don’t know… but it just went together and has so much feeling and flows so well for one song, it has so much packed into that one song," says Tardy about the tune. "We’ve come a long way from some of the songs we wrote when we were still in high school and putting songs together."Read more at BraveWords.
BravePicks 2014 Top 30
14) OBITUARY - Inked In Blood (Relapse)
15) GRAVE DIGGER – Return Of The Reaper (Napalm)
16) ACE FREHLEY - Space Invader (eOne)
17) MASTODON — Once More ’Round The Sun (Reprise)
18) EDGUY – Space Police: Defenders Of The Crown (Nuclear Blast)
19) THE DAGGER – The Dagger (Century Media)
20) PRIMORDIAL – Where Greater Men Have Fallen (Metal Blade)
21) UNISONIC - Light Of Dawn (earMusic)
22) PRIMAL FEAR – Delivering The Black (Frontiers)
23) DEVILMENT – The Great And Secret Show (Nuclear Blast)
24) MR. BIG - ...The Stories We Could Tell (Frontiers)
25) EYEHATEGOD – Eyehategod (Housecore)
26) STEEL PANTHER – All You Can Eat (Open E)
27) CALIFORNIA BREED – California Breed (Frontiers)
28) TESLA – Simplicity (Tesla Electric Co.)
29) PRONG – Ruining Lives (SPV/Steamhammer)
30) GAMMA RAY – Empire Of The Undead (EarMusic)
