Album Review: Obscureviolence - Refuting the Flesh
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
Oh fuck, this is incredible! Lead lines that groan like a suicidal whale meld with an unholy union of Terrorizer-on-psychedelics grind riffs and harrowing blackened jangling like chimes in the throat of hell. The drums are apoplectic, not “played” so much as ruthlessly smashed as though the drummer caught them balls deep in his wife. A seething conglomeration of misanthropic roars drenched in liquefied alveoli saw through your headphones and spew acid directly on your brain; it is, in all, a hellaciously narked off collection of tunes.
The Azagthoth bloodline runs thick; a leering monstrosity of a track named in whispered, petrified tones as “Spiritual Agony” demonstrates this with a demonic glee. Dropkicking your doors in with a riff plucked right from eternal anthem “Chapel of Ghouls” before lurching into a heinous, quivering plucked atonal chord trampling forth before a battalion of crushing blastbeats. It blitzkreigs ahead at breakneck pace with abominable grindcore stylings before summoning forth the looming dark celestial majesty of immolation with howling, malformed melodies. The rest of the song is a confederation of mid-paced old school death metal goodness, crushing us flat beneath a plague-bearing avalanche of meat n’ potatoes. The bleak doomsayer’s call of Infester or Teitanblood suffuses it, barbed black edges draped in dripping epidermal shreds. But if “Spiritual Agony” is the high point, it’s not to say that the rest of the release lags in it’s necrotic wake. Oh no. Because back to front, this thing slaughters with horrifying proficiency.
“Pulse of Subconscious Cruelty” is a bass-heavy speed freak heralded by vocals somewhere in the untamed no-mans land between Barney Greenway and Dave Ingram. It’s skronky discordance proves as alienating and unwelcoming as it’s percussion is fierce and uncompromising. In a few ways Obscureviolence remind me of one of 2024’s jewels, that being the excoriating malice of Adversarial’s “Solitude With the Eternal”. Both albums sprint for your throat with barbarous intensity, both impact weld blackened dissonance and bulbous, grimace inducing riffs, light glinting jaundiced and ill off a mirror sheen of fresh, steaming bile. Even the instrumental introduction – not something I’m typically enamoured with – rules. As a means by which the stage is set for the calamitous thrashing you’re about to endure it serves perfectly, laying out the myriad tools employed for slitting ravines into your tender meat, from the abrupt flurries of speed, to the sombre higher register melodies, to the discordance. It’s a practice shot of sorts to secure a sure aim before the big guns rain death upon you. At 21 minutes it would perhaps be inappropriate to speak of the release having “deep cuts”, but Christ above, does not the ravenous black metal of “The Absurdity of Existence” just slay? The initial tremolo bombardment sliding with such dexterous aplomb into deathlier crevasses at 1.30, before uniting the two approaches 1.53, allowing the initial chord of the riff to ring forth, before closing out with anxious string-bent chords and siege mentality blast worship is just sublime. I’m trying my utmost not to polish this band’s wedding vegetables too fervently, but few courses beyond strenuous bouts of frothing literary fellatio are left to me – the band is just doing so much right.
You might have guessed that I’m rather smitten with “Refuting the Flesh”. But given that nothing of mortal manufacture is perfect, surely there’s something or other to mar it’s charms, right? And perhaps there is, but God knows I’m struggling to find it. Everything Obscureviolence attempt, they accomplish with such audacious, self assured confidence. You could argue that stronger iterations of the sound exist. Very well, that aforementioned Adversarial release was indeed a phenomenon of controlled chaos. But there’s nothing that functions as an active detraction to which i could gesture with haughty dismissiveness, or that gave me even a fleeting moment’s pause. I’ve been listening to it constantly ever since receiving it for review, and on every spin it only impresses more. Lucifer glowers from perdition’s edge at realms unconquered, and Obscureviolence lead the charge. Blackened death supremacy in excelsis; a reduction of all mankind to mewling dislimbed husks, blind and writhing. There is nothing I dislike here. It packs more jawdropping heaviness into 21 minutes than albums twice, thrice it’s stunted duration. As a statement of intent, accept no substitute, and surrender yourself to the onslaught.
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