FIENDS OF EASTERN THEATERS – PART 1 (OBSCURIAL / FECUNDATION)

(Our Vietnam-resident writer Vizzah Harri has prepared a two-part sequence of reviews focused on albums released this year by Asian bands, and this is Part 1.)

A defenestration, crashing through a hearse straight into the coffin. Curtains augured in, joining the choir invisible. A sewer-slide into the glue factory. A first-class ticket out of corporeality to meet sleep’s cousin. Off the hooks and un-alived, a veritable shuffle off this mortal coil via toaster bath. And if that overbearing slew of gammon-appendaged analogies didn’t make it clear, we’re here for death served with a touch of supremacy.

Obscurial (Malaysia) – Heretic

Released April 22^nd 2024

This sophomore of Malaysian band Obscurial should be right down my alley sound-wise with a band name like that. With Heretic, Obscurial implores us to “Expect [a] faster, darker atmosphere and more brutality!” Count me intrigued. They describe themselves as “obscure death metal from the sewer of K-Hell.”

We are introduced with B-movie horror aesthetics and then dropped into a cauldron of a molasses-soaked doomy thrash riff. Enter “Blasphemous Cult”; Obscurial spares no time in bludgeoning expired equine progeny of the destrier variety back to life; it nevertheless also contains expansive bridges as segue before more relentless pummeling.

If you pay close attention, a lot is subtly hidden in the mix, with highs hitting an obversion of magnitude to lift us out of the mud and give us a vista of what has been laid to waste. The drop back into the annihilative maelstrom comes with a 10-ton wrecking ball tied to your feet, more abrupt than a midlife crisis reality-check delayed by years of substance abuse.

Roiling, granulating riffs of puissant grandeur populate the whole record, vacillating between the adoration of maws megalodon-esque and incendiary splendor. Vassals of death indeed. At times there are even post metal tremolo-d ascensions as pause; with a contumacious spirit dexterously displayed in a fettering to the thralldom of the nethermost expanses of incidence.

This is the kind of submission to repetitive discomfort that serves as purgation. The melodic space attained by singling out the lead in “Circle of Heretics”, for instance, was a beautiful touch. Speaking too soon is a big weakness of mine; those spaces are nigh ubiquitous, though never overstaying their welcome.

Photo by Adwyh

There have been people stating that this is a death/thrash album … there is very little thrash present in the low end on this album, until a profusion of those flaring leads of old are deployed once more in “Locust Plague”, with a truly unsettling backdrop of electronic haze. It sounds like emergency vehicle sirens. You know the type. Taking what is at first a vestigial strain and elevating each song into a paregoric elixir of cognitive ablation.

At a little under 41 minutes, one might feel that some fat could have been cut for streamlining. “Maggot Incubation” at 6:07 and “A Cure for Sickness” at nearly 9 minutes long do not need a panacea for a nonexistent ailment. If anything, the intro could have been cut, however the atmospheric outro that dips the hat to contemporaries like Haunter is something more death metal bands can take notes from.

With harmonious overtures adding considerable iridescence to the mix, never going full solo, never reverting to generic principles yet paying considerable homage to their slaying forebears. Obscurial are a death metal band that put their lead guitarist in solitary confinement while repetitively playing old school death and thrash leads intermittently accelerated and slowed down.

The results are spectral, although now they can’t get him to decompress back into normal 21st century society. Keeps asking about watching RTM 1 and RTM 2, the only TV channels in Malaysia back in the early 1980s. On numerous occasions during production the theme song for the Proton Saga commercial had to be removed from solos he wrote for “A Cure for Sickness” …

Jokes aside, do you like meat? You like potatoes? Here, feast in festering fecundation of prodigious consummation of destructive ideals towards euphoric release. Heretic is an album that took the death of old (school), applied the automated external defibrillator, hard-lined a ten-cent pistol of ketamine, methylphenidate, and just a touch of methamphetamine into its ossified veins, and then King–Hanneman-ed the fuck out of it.

Obscurial are:
Arap – Bass
Naim – Guitars
Afiq – Guitars, Vocals (backing)
Dee – Vocals

Heretic was mixed and mastered by Afnan Azla

 https://www.facebook.com/obscurialmusic

https://www.instagram.com/obscurialmusic/

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3EP2iEiOtGFL086dxIe6jx

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCb2r2fFkBlCqcDsLWRIQRw

Physical: Memento Mori

Digital/Vinyl: Violence in the veins records

 

Fecundation (South Korea/Japan) – Moribund

Released June 3^rd 2024

There’s plenty of good cover art out there, and Fecundation chose an artist more prolific in manipulating canvas than their guitar. A quick glance at Moribund’s cover by Bvllmetalart (Defeated Sanity, Nocturnus AD, Massacre) could bring forth images of the devil’s lettuce in bud form. Luciferian in sound though? Indeed, if one adheres to the very sounds of cessation. One need not however “Live with a false hope” that these death dealers did not “Aspire [to greatness] in hallucination.”

‘Psychedelic’ as descriptive engenders a proggier air of a sometimes-dissonant nature. Although if you’re open to believe that berserkers took the psilocybin to initiate bloodlust, then it’s less of a stretch to explain to people who shy away from extreme music that it can be enjoyed under the influence of mild to even powerful mind-altering substances. The cover painting of Moribund fits the music perfectly. Ordered chaos rendered in the wake of a cataclysmic extraterrestrial extermination of all beings sans exoskeletal majesty.

Recorded way back in 2019, the album didn’t see the light of day for 5 years because of complications caused by the pandemic. It was well worth the wait. Fecundation justifiably recommend this for fans of Necrophagist, Suffocation, Decrepit Birth, Datura and Deeds of Flesh. Ironically forged with a mind to skip the metaphorical film trailer for the melomaniac to be thrusted straight into the fulcrum of this deranged crucible; Moribund got temporally removed by half a decade from its spawning yet swelters in currency in both prevalence and wealth.

“Devoiced of truth” instigates an immediacy of invisible oranges. No intro, no fanfare, no melodic interlude to prepare you. Just the best death metal album you haven’t heard this year. Disorienting, oozing a sense of discontent and a channeling of madness; of subterranean vexation incarnate. Not a note is spared even in the brief but bewitching solo, not a breath squandered, not an impact placed in afterthought.

“Reeks of hypocrisy” gifts us with one of the few moments of reprieve from total aural assault with another entrancing solo before again entering a breakneck pace of an indentured lower end and percussive masterclass. There are times when the bass stands out so much on “The conclamation” until you realize it’s there to distract you from what else is going on.

The vox sounds like an impaled boar-demon attempting to shapeshift into a bullfrog from hell, exuding a frog-croaked/boar-squealed barrage of sweeping transmutation. The drums are played by some Giger-inspired xenomorphic entity with Kali arms. The strings are just a bit more human(oid). If people lost their shit about Vitriol’s remarkable album from earlier this year and felt left wanting for everything that came after it, then this might just fill that void.

Crazy to think this is only a two-piece made up of guitarist Jeong Jong-ha from South Korea and Temma Takahata of Japan. Technical. Brutal. Death. Stale words that nevertheless apply, or should we say merciless esoteric extreme metal for the death-deprived?

Makes me think of the urban legend of the suicidal bloke that tied one end of a rope to a rock on a cliff with the other round his neck, imbibing rat poison before jumping off with a loaded gun in his hand. All three methods failed because the grim reaper had hypothermia on his bingo card. Unlike the apocryphal Darwin(ner), Fecundation had more time to spend at the drawing board, for every abrading and pulverizing perturbance on display was one of intent. A resolve to virtually warp into immortal stasis that which is Moribund.

 https://www.facebook.com/Fecundationdeathmetal

https://www.instagram.com/fecundation_deathmetal/

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3IoMESAQ3WOc8q4UatiXay

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSA2Crkm113P6ptOcuiDBmQ

https://obliterationrecords.bandcamp.com/