Here are the most interesting releases of the past 2 weeks!
Names tell stories. The unintentional stories are often the most interesting. How a metal band named after one of the best, weirdest tech death albums of the 1990s came to play melodeath focused on big choruses is quite a story. The band’s more technical past remains audible. You get the clear, impressive base lines, you get the staccato guitar drills, but this music is far more streamlined than what you used to hear from Obscura. A Sonication was released on Nuclear Blast.
So, I do very much enjoy A Sonication. It’s a step below A Valediction, and I miss the more sprawling sound from the band’s early days, but there’s nothing wrong with A Sonication. Most of what I’ve heard others say about this album has more to do with what it isn’t rather than what it is. Guess I’m contributing to that. Setting aside context and regret, A Sonication is a catchy, smart melodeath album that I have had no trouble listening to over and over again.
Eigenstate Zero are an independent one-man progressive death metal band that have been making intriguing music for quite a while now. Shape of God Sight of Sun is a large, unwieldy album that lasts for about 20 minutes too long, as all good underground prog albums do. And while Eigenstate Zero likely won’t end up on many year-end lists, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this release and would recommend it to anyone who doesn’t mind a few warts.
Shape of God Sight of Sun contains some long tracks, but they’re never boring. You end up winding through massive journeys that always seem to be teetering on the edge of chaos. But Eigenstate Zero maintain their direction well. The album feels messy, but in a way that works to its advantage. This album is a lot to handle, but it’s a worthy experience for those with the time.
Novarupta make music somewhere on the scale of boring to beautiful. While I’ve enjoyed all of their releases so far, their slow, stretched-out style of post metal definitely threatens to fade into the background more than intended. Astral Sands, released on Suicide Records, has the occasional bite. But this is post-metal through and through.
Astral Sands draws me in and lets me live in their world. As with many great post metal albums, I end up remembering the motion of the music over the individual melodies. Novarupta wildly succeed in building sounds over the course of their songs, to the point that this album is wildly distracting if you try to keep this in the background.
The newest Sentient Ruin Laboratories album. That’s always a sentence worthy of attention. Thoughteater is Délirant‘s second full-length release, and first in seven years. The band plays dissonant black metal, sounding like some of the more depressed versions of Blut Aus Nord.
The focus of Thoughteater is vibes and atmosphere. The track names and songwriting approach both clearly indicate that this is meant to be listened to as one. Délirant‘s sound is that of a nightmare, with both the album structure and production greatly aiding the band’s marriage of subject matter and sound. While Thoughteater does sound a bit raw at times, all instruments sound clear and important. This one didn’t make as immediate of an impression as it could have, but the trade-off is that it grew as I discovered more of what the music had to offer.
With a name like Obscureviolence, this EP will either be ridiculously tight or baffling. Luckily we get the first. Refuting the Flesh, released on Transcending Obscurity Records, is the debut black/death metal EP from this Russian band. The music absolutely flies by, jammed to the point of bursting with blast beats, riffs, and howls.
The songs on Refuting the Flesh are fairly straightforward. You get muscle-bound music that follows genre tropes and succeeds with them. As much as I love a big, new experience, sometimes you just need aggressive death metal to mosh to. Obscureviolence don’t ask for a lot of your time, but they make the most of what time they have.
