OBLITERATION
Cenotaph Obscure Norway’s new masters of death return and conquer
there may be no shortage of old-school death metal bands keeping the genre’s original spirit alive, but new blood is always required to ensure a fertile future. More than any likeminded band of their generation, Obliteration have long seemed fully plugged into the deathly Ancients’ malevolent matrix, the Norwegians’ gloriously organic-sounding blend of arcane, barbarous tropes less a tribute to glories of the past than a conduit for their permanence. In simpler terms, Cenotaph Obscure sounds a lot like Autopsy, albeit Autopsy with an unexpected progressive streak that gleefully incorporates everything from post-punk dissonance to the heaving slurry of funeral doom into its foul and feverish maelstrom. As with the band’s previous two albums, it does occasionally feel as though the last 25 years of death metal evolution haven’t happened, but that sense of stasis is routinely and abruptly shattered by another clanging, Voivod-esque detour or a perfectly timed descent into crippling, scabby-knuckled slow-motion. The spidery riff that brings Eldritch Summoning to a close harks back to the early days of Norwegian black metal, but the truth is that Obliteration are spiritually linked to an even earlier time, before now familiar sub-genres were clearly defined and underground metal was a riot of deathly, black, thrashy and doomy ideas, served up by rabid maniacs with heads full of pot and vodka. It’s that sound – of youthful, degenerate euphoria and delight at such instinctive subversion – that oozes through the grazed, disfigured skin of songs like the ice-cold and breakneck Detestation Rite and the slug-trail tsunami of closer Charnel Plains. There are no gimmicks or sonic distractions, no Portal-like blurring of focus or new school hyper-tech showboating. Instead, Cenotaph Obscure offers 40 minutes of grotesque ingenuity and thunderous, neck-wrenching proof that death is alive and well.
FOR FANS OF: Autopsy, Asphyx, Cemetery Urn
DOM LAWSON