UMUR
"Dawn Of Winter" is the debut full-length studio album by German death metal act Obscure Infinity. The album was released in August 2010 by Obscure Domain Productions.
The music on the album is old school death metal. I hear influences from both the Swedish scene and the early US scene. The music is simple, brutal and effective. The vocals are convincing deep decipherable growls spiced up with the occassional higher pitched scream. To paint a picture of how old school this release actually is I´ll mention that there are absolutely no "core" elements, no technical playing or scale shredding and no polished clean production present on this album. "Dawn Of Winter" could just as well have been released in the early nineties and would probably have been greatly succesful if it had. It´s raw and brutal and the guitar leads that occur from time to time are not of the pretty melodeath kind. 8 out of the 11 tracks on the album are out and out old school death metal tracks but Obscure Infinity has opted to include a short intro and two acoustic guitar interludes on the album too. The latter two both function as little breathers. While I mentioned above that there are no technical playing on the album, I´d like to stress that the band are more than competent musicians, so fortunately no sloppy playing.
The production is dark and raw and suits the music well.
A lot of water has run under the bridge since the early nineties, and while the vast majority of retro death metal acts deliver standard to good releases, once in a while a release like "Dawn Of Winter" pops up and gets my full attention. Obscure Infinity is so convincing in their delivery of their music, that you quickly forget that the boys in the band probably can´t spell the word innovation. This commands respect and I have no problem handing out a 4 star rating.