Xecutioner's Return Review

Release Date: Aug 27, 2007
Label: Candlelight
Genres: Death Metal/Black Metal
Number Of Tracks: 11
With this album, Obituary may finally garner the attention they’ve deserved for years.

Sound:	6.5
Lyrics:	6
Impression:	5.5
Overall rating:	6
Users rating:	8.9
Comments:	5

overall: 6.3

Featured review by: UG Team, on december 04, 2007

Sound: Obituary’s first two albums are death metal classics. Their third album, ‘The End Complete’ is the best selling pure death metal album of all time, shifting over 250, 000 copies worldwide. However, after those three landmark releases, people started to divide over Obituary. They released two fairly unremarkable albums before splitting in 1997, but there was a big surprise in the metal world when, seven years later, they announced that they were going to reunite and start writing and touring as a band once more. ‘Xecutioner’s Return’ is their second post-reunion album, following the mixed bag that was ‘Frozen In Time’. Any Obituary fan would have been excited when this album was announced because Xecutioner was Obituary’s old band name. This meant that, if the title were anything to go by, the new album would be a glorious return to their brand of sickeningly brutal gory metal from the '80s.

Another reason to be excited about this album was that Ralph Santolla had joined Obituary for the album, due to Allen West’s imprisonment for driving under the influence. He’d just finished what is, in this reviewer’s humble opinion, the greatest album he or Deicide have ever made, ‘The Stench Of Redemption’. I was close to foaming at the mouth when I bought my copy. When I stuck it in my computer and started listening, I was very disappointed to hear a fairly generic thrash riff to start it off. I was truly hoping to hear a massively brutal track like ‘Cause Of Death’, even if the rest of the album didn’t follow suit. Luckily, the rest of the CD is a lot more exciting. With Allen West temporarily out of the picture, Trevor Peres has a lot more creative force as far as riffs go. I like his style as he can throw down some top quality rhythm playing when he wants to. ‘Slowly We Rot’-like riffage is back, and while their quality isn’t quite as consistent or indeed generally as high as on those records, the style is always appreciated. As shown on ‘Evil Ways’, these riffs have also been applied to a faster context, with some interesting results.

The involvement of Ralph Santolla heightened my expectations but unfortunately I was disappointed as his solos were generally uninspired, and quite often out of tune. Sure, it’s death metal but this isn’t Cannibal Corpse or Vader, a guy like him just can’t get away with playing around a bit and committing it to tape. A crying shame. Those '80s riffs would have been nearly as legendary if John Tardy hadn’t been gargling like a madman over them, and thankfully he’s got his edge back. His performance on ‘Frozen In Time’ was slightly lacklustre, and while his voice isn’t exactly back to full force, you can tell he’s got more conviction and guts this time around. His brother Donald has not made a comeback, though this is simply because he’s never had a dip in form. Crushing performance from him as always, and if you look at every specific element the pieces are there, but the songwriting and I think also the tone and production make the album rather monotonous and quite hard to pay attention to. // 7

Lyrics and Singing: If you know anything about Obituary you will know that the lyrics are basically not any good as John Tardy compromises a lot of his vocal duties without actually saying any particular words. The lyrics that are here aren’t great either, some decent imagery but honestly if you’re interested in the quality of Obituary’s lyrics you’re listening to them for all the wrong reasons. // 6

Impression: If you’re into Obituary already then you’ll understand the situation they’re in, and probably won’t even be expecting much from the album (despite the hype-inducing title). If this is the case then this album has definitely got its moments and some interesting new approaches from the band. However, if you’re new to the band this really isn’t worth a purchase as the concentration of ‘really Obituary moments’ are more in the first few albums. This is no Slowly We Rot, or Cause Of Death and nobody expected it to be but it’s a step up from Frozen In Time regardless. We can only hope that things will continue to improve the band and that one day they’ll come out with a true return to the glory days. Not this time though. // 6

overall: 5.7

Reviewed by: Devil_Driver23, on april 17, 2008

Sound: There's just something about Obituary's brand of death metal that hits you like a ton of bricks when you hear just one of their songs. They've always stood out in death metal history as one of it's most kick ass bands. And for good reason, their music was always brutal, John Tardy's vocals just as brutal, and they weren't so insanely fast that the songs became meaningless noise. However, this is probably Obituary's weakest effort of their entire career. // 6

Lyrics and Singing: They didn't write them down, and sometimes John has these really fast vocals, which can make it even harder to understand what the hell he is saying. Key words to stand out like "Evil Ways" and "Inside Your Head". I've never really been a fan of John's vocals, yes they are brutal and fit the music great. But I've always thought there might have been someone who could do better. // 6

Impression: The only song that really blew me away on this album was "Evil Ways". It is an insta-headbanger. The opening riff and then that solo at the beginning is just insane. Hard to describe in words. "In Your Head" and "Blood Shot" were also good songs. But I think most people would just listen to "Evil Ways" and then just skip through the rest of the CD. Comparing to past Obituary albums, Xecutioner's Return is not a good name for it. It just dosen't seem like Obituary. You can tell some of the songs were written in about 5 minutes and they didn't take the time to really think about the song writing like they did on "Cause Of Death". If it were stolen, I wouldn't buy it again. In my opinion, it is a very weak death metal album and it is especially dissapointing because it is coming from legends "Obituary" // 5

Comments

[Pingis_Or_Death]

Obituary is pretty good

[ph3n0m]

Obituary is amazing, but this album isn't the greatest.

[noahray]

great review
mediocre album

[Eternal_One]

Love the band, but this album was extremely disappointing. Though probably better than Frozen In Time , it is severely lacking in many departments. Boring, to be quite frank and honest, is one of the words I would use to describe this album.

[postmortem2006]

I actually quite liked most of this album.