Obituary celebrates 35 years of “Cause of Death” at Teatro Flores!
“Cause of Death” is easily one of the top 5 Death Metal records that shaped the whole genre. Alongside bands like Death, Morbid Angel, Deicide; Obituary made history in Metal back in the end of the 80’s and first years of the 90’s. The band formed by the Tardy brothers (John on vocals and Donald on drums) gave a new sound and perspective to Death Metal, not only focusing on fast riffs with brutal drumming, but creating an ambient wall filled with density and darkness.
Celebrating the 35th anniversary of that iconic album, Obituary embarked on a trip that made them come to South America once again, more specifically to Buenos Aires, Argentina. A city that had the bad fortune of being skipped on the previous South American tour of the band in 2022.
And they even made us all wait another year, since this show is a rescheduling of another one. Obituary scheduled dates in South America for 2025, but then cancelled that tour and announced on their social media that it was gonna be postponed for the next year.
The band was supposed to play at El Teatrito, a venue with a capacity of 600 people, but due to sold-out tickets, the venue was changed to a bigger one: Teatro Flores.
The date remained the same, February 18th (curiously, before the rescheduling, the 2025 Buenos Aires show was placed on the same date), and the local act came from the band “Morferus”, coming onstage at 20.20.
The local Death Metal band played a set focused on songs from their first album “Argentina Psicópata”, a record about Argentine serial killers and famous killers from the 20th century.
Their brutal performance was just what this gig needed to begin, making the first people to show up get in tune for what was coming next. The singer, Lea Cabrera, even brought his dad to the stage to sing a Terrorizer cover.
At 21.30, when the lights went off, a tape started sounding in the background as the curtains were opened. The band appeared on stage, starting their set, as always, with the instrumental track “Redneck Stomp”, which the crowd sang every single riff. After that, we see John showing up to stand at the front with his microphone and sing “Sentence Day”, followed by “A Lesson in Vengeance”, both tracks from their self-titled album from 2017.
“The Wrong Time” was the next song, and it was the only one played from their latest record, “Dying of Everything” (2023). But the best was yet to come.
After leaving the stage for a quick time, the back screen that had the band logo changed to the “Cause of Death” album cover, so everyone knew what was coming. Almost the whole album was played (skipping “Memories Remains” and “Find the Arise”), and it started the same way as the studio version that blew all our minds when we first listened to it.
“Infected” came first on the setlist, of course, with that heavy density that only can make you bang your head nonstop. Same thing with “Body Bag”, next on the list.
“Dying” and “Cause of Death” continued with the aura that got us all hypnotized by the powerful sound. Which, by the way, was pretty good. It felt like Scott Burns himself (“Cause of Death” producer, and one of the main brains behind early Death Metal-sounding albums) was the guy behind the console!
John still had those grungy, tight screams that you easily recognize, Ken and Trevor (the only men capable of making a basic Stratocaster look badass in Death Metal) on guitars, pouring nasty riffs alongside Terry on bass, and Donald hitting toms as he was in his 20’s again.
As something that became pretty common in an Obituary show, “Chopped in Half” was literally chopped in half and connected to “Turned Inside Out”. Putting an end to the “COD” set.
After a short pause behind the stage, the band returned to the scene for an encore, with the almighty hits “I’m in Pain” and “Slowly We Rot”; the final ones on this outstanding setlist!
Photos by Lina Fernandez
Review by Agustin Lopez
Produced by California Sun Producciones & Hellnoise Booking
Press HP Prensa