Human Barbecue

Obscenity's fourth album, Human Barbeque, came out in 1998 - arguably the year death metal started making a comeback after some awkward years. Despite the cheesy, dated looking cover art, fear not...this is not a death 'n' roll album, nor some misplaced "experimental" effort. If anything, it's a return to form for Obscenity, as here the band significantly lessens the melodic elements that played a fairly big role on it's predecessor, The 3rd Chapter. Instead, the band straightens up their more traditional death metal roots, tightening things up and creating an overall much more mature sounding album.

In terms of musicianship and songwriting, I'd say it's a fairly strong one - the title track in particular is actually one of my favorite Obscenity songs ever, it's just a very well-composed song, full of catchy riffs and a really cool little intro melody that brings to mind Death's "Evil Dead". That said, the admittedly cheesy Resident Evil sample might bring it down for some, but I think there's a little charm to it. Elsewhere, you've got "Infanticide" which comes right out of the gate with one of the catchiest riffs on the album, "Lycanthropy" which (despite it's awful intro sample) has some absolutely fucking infectious riffing (that damn verse riff...FUCK!) and the chunky, crushing "Soul Ripper" which brings to mind something Deicide would've done around the Once Upon the Cross-era. The band also sees fit to re-record two songs from their debut, Suffocated Truth - those being "Utter Disgust" and "Life Beyond". While I still prefer the originals in all their rotten, diseased glory, these re-recordings with cleaner production admittedly do a better job showing the band's songwriting strengths and are a worthy addition to this album. There are also some really fantastic guitar solos here, Jens Finger has really come into his own by now, namely in tracks like "Lycanthropy" and most of all, "Soul Ripper", which honestly is the very best solo I think Obscenity has ever recorded, and one of the best guitar solos in death metal history.

But they aren't all positives. The band's title song, "Obscenity", which as far as I can tell, is basically the band singing about how cool they are - is ironically the worst song here. While not exactly "bad", as it has an interesting kind of "triumphant" feel - maybe a death metal equivalent to something Manowar might do, which is unique and memorable, but I do think some of the riffs feel a little featureless and uninspired (namely the chugging verse). About 2 minutes in there's a really weird thing that I'll call a "riff-down", it has the rhythm of a breakdown but the structure of a normal metal riff - interesting idea, but nonetheless it's pretty awkward. Thankfully it comes around fairly well, with the last couple minutes being a melodic instrumental pieces accompanied by some pretty nice and tasteful melodic leadwork, cleverly capped off with some nice dual-guitar harmonies. The album then rounds out with a surprisingly cool cover of Slayer's classic "Raining Blood" which has a nice kind of "encore" vibe about it and works well for the album's flow.

In terms of production - I love the guitar tone - it's nice and meaty, and even the bass tone is pretty cool when you can hear it (a shame this is the only album Jens Clausen did with them). Jauch's vocals also sound absolutely fantastic here, as always. Probably the biggest setback for me is the snare drum, which sounds absolutely abysmal and weak, most evident during the blasting sections where it can't really give the songs the power they need and just kind of falls limp beneath the barrage of riffs and vocals, and I can imagine this production might be a little too "Morrisound-esque" for some people, but nonetheless it (mostly) gets the job done and I can't complain too much.

In the end, I wouldn't call this album essential as I have for previous Obscenity albums, but it's still a fantastic addition to their discography and a good album to pull out when you've played the early (or later) ones to death. While I feel like the band's thunder might have been stolen due to bands like Nile and Hate Eternal putting out their debut albums in 1998 - helping to revitalize the then-stagnant death metal scene - possibly due in part to the awkward and cheesy cover art (created by Jauch himself, believe it or not), it's still cool to see Obscenity stick their middle finger to the metal "scene" and just do whatever they want instead of following dumb trends like many bands saw fit to around this time.