OBSCURA — Omnivium (review)

Album · 2011 · Technical Death Metal

5/5 · 2011-04-05
Time Signature

Velocity...

Genre: prog/tech death metal

Obscura blazed into the world's attention focus with their sophomore effort "Cosmogenesis" which offered technical and challenging death metal with nods of reference to the old masters in Cynic, Atheist, Death, Morbid Angel and the like.

"Omnivium" very much continues down the path blazed by "Cosmogenesis" with complex riffage, dissonant chords, jazzy complex fretless bass patterns and insanely fast blastbeats. While you can immediately hear that it is Obscura when the brutal riffage kicks in after the acoustic intro in the opening track "Septuagint" and it would not be incorrect to claim that there are Obscura signature elements that recur on this album, it would be incorrect to claim that there is no progression from "Cosmogenesis" to "Omnivium", and it strikes me as being very obvious that the band have developed their style.

There is more focus on melody on this album (without it being melodeath!), for instance, and there is more use of acoustic guitars on "Omnivium". Moreover, Obscure venture more into the universe of dissonance than they did on "Cosmogenesis", and this creates a very interesting tension, especially when accompanied by ultra fast blastbeats. I also detect less Death influences on this album than on "Cosmogenesis", but there are more Cynic-like riffs here in several tracks - which I think is a nice touch. There are also some black metal tendencies (but the more complex kind associated with Deathspell Omega), which were absent from the previous album, and among the many extreme metal vocal styles used on this album we find a harsher 90s black metal style aggressive type of vocals, which I actually find a nice addition to the universe of Obscura.

As mentioned, there are many blastbeats, and I think that, like on "Cosmogenesis", there are too many blastbeats on the album. Blastbeats can be ultra brutal, but where there are many of them, they tend to lose the brutality factor, and "Omnivium" suffers a bit from this. Other than that, the drumming, like the rest of the musicianship, is top notch and will definitely serve to raise the bar of technical finesse in the world of death metal.

Productionwise, the sound is very polished, but it has to be so, otherwise the many details would be drowned out. The bass is very audible in the mix, which is great (since it is, after all, one of the defining features of Obscura's music), but it is not dominant in relation to the other instruments.

"Omnivium" is an interesting and challenging listen which will cause alot of fappage among prog/tech death metal fans, but it might also turn off those who are not "trained" listeners of complex and progressive extreme metal.

When all is said and done, this is a prog/tech death metal masterpiece.

more than 2 years ago
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adg211288 wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Good review, I agree with your score. I'll be posting my own for the album shortly. And I agree with J-Man, I can see this doing well, this and Fen's Epoch.