OBSCURA — A Valediction (review)

Album · 2021 · Technical Death Metal

4/5 · 2021-12-07
siLLy puPPy

With so many technical death metal artists in existence it’s becoming ever more difficult to stay relevant in a room where so many are vying to find a way through the door and usurp your spot but some bands like Germany’s OBSCURA only seem to find a new sense of relevancy with each and every album despite the room becoming more crowded by the second. Going on almost 20 years of existence, these techies led by the legendary guitarist / vocalist / composer Steffen Kummerer has suffered more than most at keeping together a band whose members don’t want to stick around. Acting as more of a tech death university OBSCURA has seen a huge number of cast members rotate through the doors given that only six albums have seen the light of day.

After 2018’s “Diluvium,” the rotating band members all bailed in unison leaving Kummerer to start from scratch and take on the challenge to remain relevant as one of tech death’s most celebrated units all the while training a new crew to keep the ship sailing. Well as luck would have it, former band members Christian Münzner (guitars) and Paul Thesseling (fretless bass) just happened to be free to rejoin the band which takes 3/4 of the lineup back to the classic days of “Cosmogenesis” and “Omnivium,” the now deemed classic era of OBSCURA’s many renditions. To fill in the shoes of powerhouse percussionist comes David Diepold who has been and still remains a vital member of the English band Cognizance.

Three years after “Diluvium,” OBSCURA is back with an axe or two to grind on the sixth installment of their metallic legendary status in the form of A VALEDICTION which in both Latin and English means an act of bidding farewell. Now i do hope that this doesn’t refer to the end of the band itself as few bands have so successfully conquered the nasty world of tech death so gracefully and sustained itself for so long. Having always been masters of sonic manipulation, freeform fusion and a knack for inserting a strong emotional connection to what should seemingly come off as nothing but frenzied noise, OBSCURA has entered the area of intermediacy where technical death metal complexities have aligned with the more melodic sensibilities of power metal, thrash metal and melo-death only without compromising any of the virtuosic attributes that make OBSCURA so ferociously appealing.

A VALEDICTION features eleven tracks and showcases a new direction that takes a side step from the progressive headiness of the past and takes on a somewhat more accessible approach of adding just enough melodic immediacy to the mix. The result is one that takes OBSCURA more into the world of Necrophagist, Gorod, Archspire and First Fragment which as signifies a plentitude of creative dynamic shifts. In the case of OBSCURA there has always been such diversity and A VALEDICTION is no exception to this rule. There are still remnants of the moody acoustic intros as heard on the opening track “Forsaken” as well as a nice balance between the slower passages and the thunderous raucousness of the blastbeat driven metallic fury however this time around the OBSCURA experience is less about progressive meanderings that take you on a wild and unforeseen journey and instead focus on the neoclassical leanings to un fold the song structures albeit with all the deathened brutality that has never ceased.

Given the virtuosic prowess of all the members featured on A VALEDICTION, the fertile crossroads of technical wizardry and melodic motifs somehow cross-pollinate into a perfect paradise of instrumental interplay. Without the more heady progressive drifting, OBSCURA takes on a more direct approach and in the process Kummerer’s vocal style sounds to me more like the melo-death angstiness of Children of Bodom’s Alexi Laiho as the music sort of has that power metal meets tech death approach in a similar albeit more complex way. Despite this slight detour into the world of more melodic extreme metal, the musical rampages on like any OBSCURA fan could hope for. Slinky fretless bass grooves working in tandem with dueling guitar majesty and percussive bombast and a guarantee that Diepold certainly qualifies as one of metal’s most promising newbies on the block.

It’s always a stomach turner when one hears a near and dear talent like OBSCURA has drifted to the melodic side of the death metal equation since it has been the alienating surreal effects of atonalities and other unconventional methodologies that have made OBSCURA stand out in the first place but despite such concerns, it is a relief that Kummerer has triumphed once again in reinventing his baby by steering it only subtly in various directions without losing the underlying attributes that make OBSCURA what has always been. Very few can master these tightrope acts between unbridled experiments, beastly brutality and melodic masterful connectability in their music but it has been demonstrated on A VALEDICTION that OBSCURA is by no means in any danger of going the way of the dodo. In fact it seems like they only get better as time goes on.