TECH-DEATH MASTERS COMPLETE THEIR FOUR-ALBUM OPUS Obscura

2016’s Arkóasis was a good album, but something was missing. It seemed unfocused, like the band were taking for granted the wheel they reinvented with 2009’s Cosmogenesis and 2011’s Omnivium. As the final piece to a massive four-album concept, Diluvium – which refers to an oceanic flood – bursts out like air from the lungs of someone breaking the surface after panicky underwater submergence. Clandestine Stars sounds like Obscura playing for their lives; the crisp, staccato guitars and fretless bass lurch are embraced by erudite blasts and Steffen Kummerer’s gravitation between death metal harshness and vocoder kitsch. Over the next 10 tracks, Diluvium hardly lets up, but never devolves into a rudimental display. The epic sprawl of The Conjuration, the downcast An Epilogue To Infinity and Emergent Evolution’s precision bubble with aggression and technique, but more importantly possess ear-hook choruses, pointed riffs, infectious harmonic layers and exceptionally phrased leads.

FOR FANS OF: CYNIC, BEYOND CREATION, ALKALOID