Dying of Everything Review

Band	Obituary
Album	Dying of Everything
Type	Album (Studio full-length)
Released	January 13, 2023
Genres	Death Metal
Labels	Relapse Records
Length	44:57
Ranked	#95 for 2023 , #4,987 all-time

Reviewer :  Cosmicism         Rating :  85 / 100

Major respect is due to Obituary considering how it's almost 40 years and nothing on this album feels forced, and nothing is lazy or awkward either. Very few bands can keep up this level of solid quality and listenable songwriting for 45 minutes straight when they're this old. I get a clear sense that the band and the recording staff all took the album totally seriously while in the studio.

There is a limit to how good the end product gets though. Most melodies are very very simple, and it's Obituary's trademark, but so much simplicity did bring me to Mediocre Town for a few moments. Keeping it simple has brought them a solid fanbase and a discography with no major mistakes, but I also started hearing how their songwriting stays so amazingly far away from taking risks. After all these years, can't they envision doing something just a tiny bit weird and envision it working out well?

While it's also not risk-taking, I really enjoyed the last song going into full-on doom. Well, with those vocals, I guess that makes it death doom but anyway, it was one of the better parts of the album, and the most surprising. After deciding on my score, I watched a couple of reviews, and the consensus is that the self titled album is a tiny bit better than this one, so I really look forward to listening to that one some time. For now I'll say that Dying of Everything is for me a little more enjoyable than the legendary Cause of Death.

Not to say it in a way that insults the band, but the album cover of Dying of Everything is without a doubt artwork of the highest level, and I think a lot of us know the name Lewandowski. Well, I can't stop staring at. It follows a narrative and right-to-left flow that creates a very strong spatial theme. However, with the placement of the sun, the enormous size difference between the marching figures and the lone person in the foreground, and with the inscrutable nature of the light blue building - all these things contradict or maybe question the spatial theme or storyline that feels so solid at first glance. In other words, are the marching figures being executed in the building, or are they injuring it, or both? This questioning aspect of the painting is a high-quality tool for criticizing humanity's faults and weaknesses. Thank you Mr. Lewandowski, and rest in peace.