This tour by Obituary, dubbed the Barely Alive In The UK tour, saw the pioneering US death metal band play a string of dates across the UK and Ireland that I have not seen in some time. Indeed the recent Deicide tour, if you can call it a tour, consisted of only two dates, though the band was doing a raft of festival appearances during the summer to coincide with it. With 18 gigs planned, many were sold out, though not the one I attended for this review. The Stylus venue is a fine venue but can be difficult to watch bands if very full even if it is spread over a couple of tiers. Clearly the old guard had turned out in force for this show with a great many of early attendees queuing up for merch at the Obituary table, myself included.

Unusually there was only one support, namely Pest Control who were accompanying Obituary for these dates and a band I reviewed when they supported Kreator on a very snowy night in March. Since that gig it is clear that the Leeds act has gone from strength to strength judging by the vitriolic performance they unleashed upon the hordes gathered to witness it.

They certainly garnered a whole new set of fans and whilst the bands crossover thrashing mayhem was very different to the death metal that was to appear later, their unbridled violence was captivating from the moment they hit the stage.

‘Extermination’, ‘Masquerade Party’ and ‘Buggin’ Out’ were shot out like machine volleys as vocalist Leah terrorised the audience with throating shredding savagery. The bands no nonsense onslaught was capitalised upon in the pit, which was sent in a frenzy on ‘Don’t Test The Pest’ and ‘Wake In Hell’, teeming one vicious riff after another onto the crowd who were very appreciative.

You could see nods of approval from people stood near me at the back as Leah announced it was good to be back in our home town of Leeds to which there were inevitable chants of Yorkshire before playing a new song called ‘Enjoy The Show’ and blending it with the closing doublet of ‘Infestation’ and their now trademark tune ‘Pest Control’.

Interaction with the crowd was minimal and if truth be told it wasn’t needed as the band subjected the crowd to an unmitigated mauling.

I opted to wear my very grey ‘Cause Of Death’ tour shirt from 1990 and was fearful it might fall apart during the evening as the venue’s temperature seemed to increase a fair bit for some reason. Obituary have been stalwarts of the death metal scene for decades now and during that time I’ve seen the band fifteen times before this show. With the band starting around 9pm it was clearly going to be an early bath as Donald Tardy arrived behind his kit to a cheer and the guitarists joined him to an equally loud cheer whereupon they kicked off with the instrumental piece ‘Redneck Stomp’.

They had a backing screen showing a mocked up Budweiser label of their logo and death metal on it and the rest of the text blurred for probably copyright infringement reasons I suspect. It was a fine start and gave the jostling crowd time to get into position for the ensuing carnage to come when they followed it with ‘Sentence Day’.

John arrived to a cheer equal and beyond that of his band mates and was on pristine pernicious form. His screams were blood curdling from start to finish, pacing the stage like a caged beast. ‘A Lesson In Vengeance’ came next as noticeably the guitar sound sliced through the crowd like butter and was incredibly loud too.

No new songs from their terrific new album ‘Dying Of Everything’ so far as they continued with ‘Visions in My Head’. The momentary pause before it started gave the audience time chant the band’s name as the screen changed to just their logo where here the crowd opted to do straight headbanging rather than a pit.

Finally the band aired one of their new tunes, ‘The Wrong Time’, after another brief pause, something the band has always done I might add. John gave a spiel about the new album and announced the title of the tune as the screen changed to the album cover and reignited the pit into action.

‘Slow Death’ was followed by ‘My Will To Live’ in quick succession as I decided to shift to another part of the venue because it was becoming increasingly difficult to see anything where I was stood. The guitarists were on fine form even if Trevor always looks like someone has crapped on his plate, grimacing continually. Donald was awesome too, his inimitable style pounded out the beats to the groove infested songs.

Now for some reason probably only known to the band they decided to play the iconic ‘Chopped In Half’ which was greeted with a roar of approval but instead of playing it fully decided to meld it with ‘Turned Inside Out’ which was a great tune too but why they didn’t play both in their entirety is baffling, though I suspect a great deal of people didn’t even realise.

Still, it was great to hear the older tunes as homage to my ridiculously fading tour shirt. The stage was plunged into darkness as battle noises were heard and could only mean that ‘War’ was coming next, which it did. With a screen change the band let rip bellowing the title ‘War’ with gusto and bravado and linking it, like on the album, with ‘Dying Of Everything’.

The band’s sound was immense as they followed it with another older tune ‘I’m In Pain’ with it cavernous riff, which was greeted with a muted response I felt as they didn’t seem to know it surprisingly. Donald did a short solo, which was more like an elongated fill before the band concluded their show with an even older tune.

I think every Obituary gig I’ve ever attended has ended with ‘Slowly We Rot’ from the band’s debut as John says virtually the same thing each time, namely “this is the title track of our very first record”. The crowd definitely knew this one as the screen changed to their older logo and toxic green light beamed down upon us making the pit look like it was going mouldy.

Obituary are one of those bands that just do not let you down when playing live and was this one of the best times I’ve seen Obituary, definitely, the band was fired up and completely on form and left those who had seen them before wholly satisfied and those new floored in amazement.

REVIEW: Martin Harris

PHOTOS: Andy Pountney (@shot_in_the_dark_photography2)