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Obscura Announce New Album And Tease Some Tracks

Finally! Technical/progressive death metal masters Obscura are announcing their fourth album after a five-year-long wait! The band’s 2011 release Omnivium was a delightful masterpiece, but after the departure

8 years ago

Finally! Technical/progressive death metal masters Obscura are announcing their fourth album after a five-year-long wait! The band’s 2011 release Omnivium was a delightful masterpiece, but after the departure of the talented Christian Muenzner and Hannes Grossmann to Alkaloid, questions about the band’s sound and future naturally arose. After all, those two were pretty essential to the band’s sound, or so it seemed. Now the band are announcing Akroasis, and they’ve posted a teaser to show that they’re back stronger than ever. Check it out after the jump along with some impressions.

Well, first of all, this sounds like the Obscura we’ve come to know and love. That’s immediately obvious. The band have returned to some of their more old-school influences, especially in the first track where the Focus-era Cynic sound is laid on quite heavily. While the interim guitarist Tom Geldschlager has left the band, his contributions are still included in the album, which can be heard in the form of some fretless guitar shenanigans. Other than that, the album has all the classic Obscura stylings; ranging from Steffen Kummerer’s growls, Linus Klausenitzer’s (who’s also in Alkaloid, by the way) fretless playing, melodic-yet-heavy riffing, vocoders and more. This seems like a combination of the band’s releases so far, with further polish thrown on top. Really, this all sounds extremely exciting and immediately erases all doubt as to whether the album will be good. It’s releasing on the 5th of February 2016 via Relapse, by the way. Pre-orders are live on the label’s website and the band’s bandcamp, so do the thing if you’re so inclined. Even the artwork is so beautiful.

-NT

Noyan

Published 8 years ago