Customer Reviews

Obscura

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Rarely do a band somehow manage to embody a genre whilst also defying it and giving it the finger. Gorguts kinda sound like Robert Fripp teamed up with some avant-garde musicians who have been listening to too much free jazz and decided to record a death metal album. Gorguts are death metal (or at least tech death). The growled/barked vocals are there, as are the heavy guitars, technical riffs and blast beats. Yet at the same time, there's no death metal out there that sounds like this.

Obscura is, for lack of a better word, disgusting. It's horrible to listen to. Aurally it's completely crushing. Aesthetically its dissonance sounds like metal being scratched. Conventional melody is nowhere to be heard. And it is inTENSE. The mood and atmosphere of this music is blistering the way death metal should be yet so rarely is. Obscura is just hedious. But it's like a car crash on the other side of the road. You know you're not meant to enjoy it, yet somehow you can't turn away. There's something so visceral about it that your curiousity gets the better of you. Everytime I listen to Obscura I keep trying to figure out why I like listening to it. All I know is that I do. The music gives me butterflies in my stomach and gives me the chills. I've never had that from a death metal album before, even ones I like more than this one (of which there are very few).

There is no tech death album like Obscura. Any openminded fan of heavy, dissonant and intense music needs this album.

Man these guys went over the top on this release. Yeah its brutal alright but its constantly changing insane time signature overkill is daunting to say the least. I don't see how these guys kept it together, great musicianship at any rate, but not one of the most accessable albums I've ever heard. Sometimes a groove appears but most of this is like Captain Beefheart on steroids and meth during his Trout Mask Replica days. Friggin' insane, dark and ugly. Its savory but for special tastes. I have to give props to the drummer Patrick Robert, he is a fantastic musician. Just for keeping a beat in this nuttiness he alone gets 5 stars, not to mention the other guys. This album is dissonant, unusual (they use a violin on Earthly Love), original and fantastic.

If you're looking for a traditional Death Metal CD with "dry heave" vocals and ultra bass-frequency guitars, look elsewhere. Gorgut's first two albums were pretty good "traditional" Death Metal albums. With Obscura they've gone way beyond the boundaries of Death Metal or even Metal in general. This is not an album you can slam a six-pack and mosh to - it requires your full concentration...the music is unbelievably complex and dissonant - so much so that at first listening it sounds like a total mess (at least if you're not used to listening to free-form jazz). But, if you are persistant, it all starts to make horrible sense. Everything about this album is totally unique: In addition to Luc Lemay's more customary Deathmetal vocals, Steve Hurdel's hoarse shrieking style is truely frieghtening. The guitars are not anywhere near the low-end jackhammer of most other Deathmetal bands - These guys use all six strings and then some. The drums are beyond anything I've ever heard - time signatures mean nothing to these guys. Perhaps best of all, instead of the endless gore and brutality which compose most Deathmetal albums, the lyrics on Obscura actually deal with the experience of death. Obscura is definetly the deepest, heaviest, most technically brilliant and most frieghtening Death Metal album ever recorded.

This is an album that trying to describe in words is pretty pointless. Let me put it this way, this album makes listening to Dillinger escape plan, watchtower, cynic, skeptics universe, mastodon, ect, seem tame, or well.. normal. As another reviewer described it, its similar to captain beefheart, but if he put the metronome up about 100 beats and played metal. Whats truely great about this album is it expands your idea of what can be done with music, much like a beefheart album did back in the day. It's insane that there's actually musicians who can play this. Also unlike many techical metal albums, the albums not half an hour long, its little over an hour. What really sets this apart is how even as dissonent and different it is, after a few listens I got into it, and now everything else seems tame in comparison. Also, since the music is so complex, you can listen to it often without it geting boring. My only problems, with this album is the death metal vocals can get a little annoying, but I suppose it fits in with the brutal feel of the album, and I felt the album starts to lag a bit in the middle, basicly with the song clouded.
In closing,an amazing album that every creative musician and fan of metal should listen to. If your into noise rock or ambient and not into metal, still check out this album, you won't be dissapointed.

After their first 2 genreic albums, we find that the guys in gorguts where pulling our leg, and now they decided to show the world what they can really do. Ladies and Gentlemen I give you Obscura, a masterpiece in technical Deathmetal. The first song, titled Obscura, despite its brutality and catchiness, seems as if it's there to humour you! What comes after is a jazzy blend of riffs, presented in a manner that is completely unique. "Obscura" is simply and exhaustingly impressive piece of technical death metal. Clocking in at over 70 minutes of controlled precise brutality, this album does not disappoint, or dissipate in heaviness as the album rolls along its nearly confusing stipulation of time changes. Strange guitar bends and effects encrust the death metal riffing here, shifting and morphing the album from one rhythm to the next, never staying in one place for very long showing us all how deathmetal should be done. DON'T BE FOOLED BY THE NAME! This isn't a goregrind band. In fact none of the lyrics are about gore at all! Fans of talented music will definately eat this one up! A must buy!

Tired of the same old "grind?" Do you like death metal, but feel like the genre's getting stale? Despite this band's somewhat goofy name--which, I admit, made me wait too long to pick up this album--you should get this now. There's a great variety of tempos here, and some really strange, "obscure" riffs which you will nonetheless find embedded in your cranium later. I was pleasantly surprised when it grabbed me right from the first track, and didn't let go until the equally strange ending.

If you like this album, get Cephalic Carnage's Exploiting Dysfunction too.

The first time listening Obscura will sound like just a bunch of noise, but listen after listen you begin to understand more and more...i'd agree with the reviewer who said this album is like a rubix cube, insanely complex,bizarre time signatures that confuse the hell out of you,grating guitars and vocals that tear at your soul and drums straight from polyrhythmic hell, and at times...beautiful(??), yes i said beautiful, after about the 10th listen or so you begin to hear the melody in the song even though it sounds like there is none at first. It will become VERY evident over time if you are patient. Chaotic genius...i'd say Obscura is a MUST HAVE!!!!

With the continuing tech-metal explosion, it's a true tragedy that "Obscura" is long out of print. Though already a fairly legendary release among afficianodos, were "Obscura" readily available it would possibly earn a deserved reputation as one of the most outlandish and distinctive tech-metal albums ever released. To be perfectly blunt, I've listened to a lot of tech-metal in my day, but I haven't heard much that sounds like this.

Extreme metal is, of course, known for being harsh and abrasive, but Gorguts take this tendency to another level here. Truthfully, many tech and extreme metal bands are not really actively discordant, they merely play very fast, very loud and with little regard for conventional melody. "Obscura", however, actually attacks the ears, nastily expanding upon the death-jazz formula pioneered in the early 90s: piercing, avant-garde melodies, unconventional chords and shrieking harmonics overlay shifting, asymmetric time signatures while the band effortlessly leaps from extremely fast to dirge-slow and everything in between. The guitar/bass interplay is uniquely abrasive, with the prominent, slap bass fighting with the sometimes monstrous, sometimes atmospheric guitars to create a discordant wall of noise, in contrast to the meaty but relatively clean sound of most metal. The drumming is somewhat more conventional, combining traditional DM blasting and double bass with a jazzy snare work and a Meshuggah-like mechanistic approach. Vocals are perhaps the weak point, as Lemay employs a competent but fairly run-of-the-mill death growl. (He's fine, but sometimes lacks the passion and agony the music demands.) All this combines to make a brutal noise cocktail derived from typical DM, but nevertheless almost completely distinct from most examples of the genre. Gorguts, in particular, display a proclivity for slow, doomy atmosphere where the unconventional guitar styles are put to best use.

Interestingly, the song structures here a somewhat less convoluted than you'd often here in tech-death, with fewer riffs and more repetition. This is ultimately for the best, since the bizarre instrumental interplay deserves to be examined in depth, rather than glossed over and forgotten. Overall, this is actually more immediately memorable than most tech-death, partially because it's so unique, partially because Gorguts actually utilize some eerie, alien melodies from time to time. Nevertheless, this a frightfully dense album.

It's difficult to choose standouts, as everything here is quite compelling, and I haven't fully absorbed it all. (I'd usually wait, but at 60 minutes, to do so will take a long, long time.) Most obviously, the title track is a fierce opener, immediately leaping into the howling guitars and spastic drumming that define the album while including a slow, grinding break and weird, tapped melody later on to provide hints of memorability. The closer, "Sweet Silence", is an instrumental, and another particularly noteworthy track, with a few more hints of melody atop the bruising riffs and popping basslines. Though not one of my favorites, most listeners will immediately notice "Clouded", an incredibly slow, seemingly endless dirge which gradually pounds the listener into submission.

Sadly, I fear this review has given you little sense of just how remarkable a tech-death album this is. Anyway, any serious fan of tech-metal needs to put up the cash and check it out. (Or, better yet, buy a copy of "From Wisdom to Hate". It's not as good, but it's cheaper, shorter and somewhat toned down while still similar, making it easier to absorb.)

Edit: Commenter CotFS says that this is available on iTunes, if you want to get it via legitimate means.

I knew this album would be something unusual just because of the stellar reviews it has accumulated, but I really didn't expect anything amazing. I expected another death metal band just barley emerging out of the general rehashed blandness of the genre. I couldn't have been more wrong.

'Obscura' is a completely original and demonic effort from the tech-death scene. You might think to yourself that even tech-death is getting maybe a little stale, lacking anything that Cryptopsy or Suffocation hasn't done already. This belief would be well warranted, but nonetheless, inaccurate thanks to 'Obscura'. This slab of demonic dissonace is even unique in the world of tech-death. I have yet to hear an death metal album as completely absorbing as this one is. Several times I have popped 'Obscura' into my player hoping to only listen to maybe a track or two, and realizing later that I had just listened to the whole album. Yes, it is THAT gripping.

All the usual stuff is here, the abrupt time changes, the staggering drum beats, and the relentless, dischordant madness, but what puts this album head and shoulders above the rest is the fact that it is actuall very well written. Everything contributes to the awesome atmosphere that 'Obscura' achieves, and everything is perfectly timed, avoiding repetiveness. Every riff from start to finish is just so down-right demented and ugly that I can not help listening to this constantly, even almost a month after I purchased it.

If you are looking for something wickedly original and entertaining, then click purchase immediately. A wonderful album even surpassing the greatness of Cryptopsy's 'None So Vile'. An absorbing and relentless masterpiece.

Melting clocks, trains emerging from fireplaces. It's all very real, but you can just touch it........... until it turns into a hideous man. You just can't look away, but it keeps running toward you until it turns in a car. Then a transformer. And as you watch helplessly, in a trance, everything goes normal. And your left with the unpleasany memeories.

Obscura is like a dream. Not a normal happy one, the ones where you fall, see images you never seen before, surreality. Those rare images that make absolutly no sense, but you ponder them, and they somehow appeal. Or maybe a nightmare, depending on if you can handle the intensity. One of those dreams that make no sense. That's what this album is like. Like surreal art, at a first glance, it may just seem like a mess (a another example besides the Persisant of Memories by Salvador Daili are those painting that just look like a little kid just took paint and spread it everywhere). But it has a meaning, and it's something, it has a meaning, a purpose. Even the cover is surreal. What exactly is that? Why does a human body have a pig head? What is it doing? WHAT IS IT?! Alas, it's odd, but you just love it.

Every song on this is just strange, creepy, insanely horrible. I can't help but like it, as it's heavy, and is really intense. Luc Lemay sounds like a tortured soul, but what is it about? The guitars are harsh and jarring, they can make you deaf if your not careful. Seriously, I think I lost some of my hearing after listening to this album the first time. Okay, I can still hear well, but that's not the point.

The best aspect I would say is the surreality. What does that creepy guitar mean? Why should you understand the lyrics. What is the song about anyway? All is thrown, and like those surreal dreams, they never quite go together. That's what makes this such a masterpiece. The music is awesome, and changes all the time, and sometimes, effects just jump out at you, and they are just insanly out of place, but it's still a great part of it. LIke those dreams, there isn't much of a structure. Songs can just end, like those dreams, and sometimes you think it's going to keep going on, but you just exit the madness. That's what you need to udnerstand about this masterpiece. It's not just that, and that music can sometimes be cathcy. After all, melody is important. As a whole, melody is the basis of music.

And while Obscura is mostly noise, that noise becomes a twisted dream of of weirdness. The music actually is musical, it just takes time to oncover, like surreal art. Be warned, this isn't you Deicide death metal. This is nothing you have ever heard in your life. Lastly, the music itself is original, and I would say that this is just a twisted masterpiece, that some people just don't understand. However, give it some time, and think about it. Like Captain Beefheart, it's another masterpiece that will confuse you and snap your mind. Blow all your knowledge of death metal away when listening to this. Don't expect Chris Barnes. In general, you will never hear music like this again.