Obscura

Day Fourteen. When you first get into extreme metal, you kind of want to see just how far these bands can take it. What's the most brutal, crazy, technical, and extreme thing anyone has ever committed to tape? A number of bands set out to out-offend and out-gross normies in the most predictable manner possible: just downtune the guitars, make the vocals really guttural, and play as load and as fast as you can. It's great fun and all, but it loses its luster after about five minutes. What Gorguts presented here with "Obscura" was a different way to go about it.
I first heard Gorguts in the heyday of file sharing programs such as kazaa, limewire, and imesh. Searching for extreme metal, I downloaded the song "La Vie Est Prelude". The first thought that entered my head was "what in the hell?" I was already into some fairly brutal stuff like Cryptopsy, Suffocation, and Deicide at the time. But Gorguts was something else. It goes beyond just being fast, technical, and brutal. It's truly unsettling and even disturbing stuff.
Most death metal heads love it when normies give the "what the fuck are you listening to?!" reaction as they're blasting Cannibal Corpse. Gorgut's "Obscura" generates a "What the fuck are you listening to?!" reaction from death metal heads. It is so freaking crazy that it's off-putting to metal heads in the same way death metal is off-putting to normies. New achievement unlocked.
The reason why this album is completely nuts is because the musicians deliberately select the most dissonant chords and anti-harmonious sequence of notes to create their riffs. This thing literally violates every possible rule in every music theory book. But even with the all the discordant madness going on, there's still a certain tread and, dare I say, even melody you can follow throughout each song. In other words, there's genuine riffs that you can play back in your head later. You just won't be able to hum them like you could an Iron Maiden riff (massive contrast is an understatement).
The bands that copied this album where never this good. They kind of took chaos for granted. They just compiled a series of grating riffs and mashed them together. There was nothing to tie them together. They didn't coalesce and create a certain flow and logic to things. Gorguts never abandoned proper songwriting. There's still a certain apprehensible flow and logic to "Obsucra" that's actually similar to traditional death metal bands. It's just buried underneath the ear-shattering sonics.
Heavy metal started off as just loud bluesy rock n roll. With each successive generation, metal bands sought to remove the rock and blues influences. "Obscura" takes us as far away as you can possibly get from rock music. It's not even really metal. It belongs in a category of its own. This thing was released in 1998 and it sounds completely insane even now.
I would normally say "Buy or Die", but honestly, this stuff isn't for everyone. It's truly grating, jarring, and unpleasant.
Buy and listen to at your risk!


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