Two words: Obscura, Cosmogenesis.
If those words make you smile, you will want to read this post. If those words make you yell, “FUCK YEAH!“, you will absolutely, positively want to read this post.
You may have known that Obscura will be releasing a new album called Omnivium in North America on March 29. You may even have seen the cover artwork for the album (designed and laid out by Orion Landau).
But did you know that about 4 hours ago, Obscura released a song from Omnivium for the purpose of titillating the masses? We found out via an e-mail from NCS contributor BadWolf, in these words: “Holy Shit. One song in and it’s an album of the year contender. One word: Opethcore. It exists now. And it is truly amazing.”
Y’know, we really don’t need to say anything more about this song other than to say that we’re just as fucking enthusiastic as our bro BadWolf. Zip on past the jump and hear it for yourselves. Fuuuuuuuuuck yeah.
There is a YouTube player below — the screen will stay black, so don’t get freaked out. Just press play.
And while you’re listening to that bit of awesomeness, you can amuse yourself by gazing at the album cover below. Did you know Nervecell had a new album on the way? Now you know.
11 Responses to “OBSCURA RELEASES NEW SONG; WE WAIT FOR OUR HEADS TO FALL BACK TO EARTH”
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The word “opethcore” makes me cringe. Acustic guitars does not an Opeth make.
Anyway, I’m fucking stoaked for the new Obscura.
Long songs, clean singing, odd time, great melodies AND acoustic guitar in a death metal context DOES an Opeth make.
Anyway, I think I’ve played this track six or seven times this morning. Now The Faceless are going to have to step up, because their followup to Planetary Duality is coming.
Good stuff. Now the only question is why do I have to wait until March %&#$ 29 to get this?
That Nervecell cover looks like some wierd alt/industrial stuff. I didn’t know Faceless had something new coming.
Nervecell is an awesome death metal band from Dubai. Their 2008 debut, Preaching Venom, is killer. And here’s what Blabbermouth reported in late December: “THE FACELESS will enter guitarist Michael Keene’s studio in Los Angeles before the end of the year to begin recording its third album for an early 2011 release. Michael states, “‘Expect a very progressive and vibey record that maintains the high-energy that you would expect of THE FACELESS and even more thought-provoking lyrical content than ever before.'”
While not normally my cup of tea, the Obscura stuff isn’t half bad, well it wasn’t until I heard the vocals, quite boring and generic. With a sharper vocalist this could have been quite killer – and of course all the clean vocals should go 🙂
But of course they should go! I do much prefer Steffen Kummerer’s growls to his cleans — which is one (of many) reasons I like his other band Thulcandra (no clean singing). But instrumentally, Obscura is terrific.
I’ll have to check out Thulcandra.
Completely off topic, after giving the new Belphegor a few spins it’s grown monumentally on me. I’m almost ready to say best Belphegor since Lucifer Incestus.
There’s a Thulcandra song included with our review here:
https://www.nocleansinging.com/2010/06/24/thulcandra/
Opethcore? Ummm… no.
Aside from my initial reaction to reading that term, this doesn’t even sound like Opeth to me. This actually sounds a lot more like thrash with growls and some acoustic parts thrown in for some variety. Opeth has a strong undercurrent of 70’s prog/psychedelia to their music, something which can also be said of Amorphis and to some extent Edge Of Sanity, who all got started around the same time, just as the long running melodeath bands have certain elements in common. Most other progressive death metal bands take cues from more modern bands and sounds than that of the bands who started at the end of the 80s’ or the first years of the 90’s, which in turn may have been influenced by the same stuff that influenced the very bands I’m talking about. I hope you understand what I mean.
As Fredrik said, acoustic guitars do not an Opeth make. Nor do time changes, use of both growled and cleanly sung vocals or even adding other instruments to the creation. Quite frankly, there aren’t many bands that sound like Opeth – or Amorphis for that matter, since I find that the two are very similar. Opeth may have longer songs (but then again, I don’t consider 7+ minutes “long”) and have a strong prog feel to their music, Amorphis has a stronger folk element. Opeth’s become one of the best know metal bands around and have a loyal following, although they also have a split fan base because of the prog elements and not everyone’s going to see eye to eye about everything Opeth does. Finally, regarding Amorphis, if Skyforger and Magic And Mayhem are any indication, I’d expect Tomi Joutsen to make use of growls more often along with the band stepping closer to the sound they had during their first few albums or so
No one really sounds like them (either band, really) at length; a song from a given band might be something like what you’d hear from them, but I don’t think there are really any Opeth clones out there. Some bands you can’t copy. Okay, I will concede that Barren Earth does sound like the bastard child of Opeth and Amorphis (having two of Amorphis’ former members and Dan Swanö being a big part of that, I’d say), yet not a blatant ripoff of what either band has done and continues to do. Beyond that, I think we have a bunch of bands that follow the same path, just with different doses of each ingredient.
I wounldn’t want to listen to tend bands that are clones of Opeth. I want variety. Thankfully, there is plenty of that to be found, even with common influences and elements that many bands share. We don’t have dozens of bands that are interchangable. This may not be the case throughout all of metaldom, but it seems that among the more extreme bands (or simply those that aren’t the darlings of the moment), there aren’t as many cookie-cutter, formulaic bands. That’s how it should be. It may not always be obvious at first, but if you take the time to find the differences, you’ll probably find that out of 100 bands, 90 of them have their own kind of sound.
Okay, rant over. As for Obscura, it’s not bad stuff.
Musically, it’s quite sound. With the vocals, I will meet Johan halfway. Listening to this song, I though both approaches could have been better. Maybe the song would be alright without the cleanly sung stuff, but I have no problem with them being there. Just lose the effects distorting them and you improve greatly upon that part. I’m going to have to hear more than this one song, though.
Some bands are so iconic that their names get used almost as a short-hand adjective for a certain style of music, and they become reference points in describing the music of other bands, even though no other band is really quite like them. Opeth is one such band. Meshuggah is another. I’m assuming that’s the sense in which BadWolf made the Opeth reference. But I guess he can tell us.
Opeth sucks in my opinion compared to this band.