Obscureviolence – Refuting the Flesh (Darkened Death Metal)
I never seem to have trouble coming up with genre tags (primarily for my own personal enjoyment), but this new power trio sure gave me a challenge! Featuring members of Horror God, Russia’s Obscureviolence seem, at first, to combine two popular genres as has been the fad this past decade, the black and the death, into one. Wouldn’t that simply be blackened death metal, then, or something akin to it? You’d think so, but much like their name, Obscureviolence isn’t doing things entirely by the book. That’s how they drag you in with Refuting the Flesh and lend a seriously dark tone to their metal that goes from eerie to actually enveloping.
Primary hallmark of a good band = you never know the album repeated and you’ve gone through it several times already. I’ve probably listened to this 10 times already and wasn’t aware of it at least the first three. One of the simple reasons for this is Refuting the Flesh is so well-mixed it’s difficult to tell where the blackened begins and the death metal ends, but that’s far from a complaint, and it’s certainly not a fault, at all. Obscureviolence draw back the hefty slicing of death metal for long enough for black metal gloominess to set the listener’s mood, but it is never, ever short on cruelty. Further, it’s not just a cut of both sides of their style, rather these guys know how to get the listener to dig deeper into the structure, as moments of incongruity demand the attention, yet confront enough they become like repressed emotions, bubbling and oozing to the surface until the pressure tears through the flesh. I’m still amazed this is only five tracks long, but somehow Obscureviolence managed to pack it all in without either idling or rushing through any of it. Definitely another one to pay attention to, if they decide to grace us with future works.
Obscureviolence Official Instagram
Written by Stanley, Devourer of Souls
Obscureviolence – Refuting the Flesh
Transcending Obscurity
Cover Art: Sergey T. (S.TkN.)
4.6 / 5
