Songfacts®:

• This is the title track from Obituary's second studio album, Cause of Death. It was written by on-again/ off-again lead guitarist Allen West, who wrote half the songs on the album before his departure.
  About the line-up: Vocalist John and drummer Donald Tardy are indeed brothers and founders of the band. Trevor Peres is on rhythm guitar. Then there's Frank Watkins on bass, replacing Daniel Tucker who got amnesia from a car crash and disappeared. That leaves lead guitar James Murphy brought in to replace Allen West.
• The whole Allen West / James Murphy saga, sourced from Precious Metal: Decibel Presents the Stories Behind 25 Extreme Metal Masterpieces: West discovered he was a father and had a temporary freak-out over having a kid and not having enough money. So he leaves. Bassist Frank Watkins originally wanted to call up his friend, Trey Azagthoth of Morbid Angel, but decided against it. James Murphy just happened to leave Death (the band) at this time and called up producer Scott Burns on a whim, who said - what a coincidence! - we just happen to have another death metal group here who needs guitar! As Murphy tells it, he just got home from the Death tour, unpacked his bags, went to the studio the next morning, and by that evening he was recording. But the band warned him that if West came back, they'd take him over Murphy. Murphy was already feeling like an outsider to the band by the time they were touring Cause of Death, so when the band met for rehearsal and discovered Allen West's truck parked in the Tardy brother's driveway, he left without argument.
  "Cause of Death" was the first song played for Watkins when he was brought it. The band was literally jamming in the Tardy brother's garage when Watkins met with them, and he learned it right off the bat; as the other band members commented, he knew it even better than they had it down.
• Also in Precious Metal, the band is quite candid on their lyrical practices. Trevor Peres states: "To be honest, still to this day, I have not seen a lyric sheet of a whole entire song. No one ever has." John Tardy fesses: "I don't know if I just get to the points in songs where instead of trying to make up some words or write down something that means something, I'm more concerned with the way it just sounds." Peres also explains: "You'll hear in 'Cause of Death' he says 'cause of death' in there. But lyrically, we never did have a concept like, 'Let's sing about world peace!'"