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Obitus: The march of the drones
26/01/11 || Love Lagerkvist
Q: You know why Morbid Angel are awesome? Well, partly because they made some flesh ripping tunes back in the day, but also because they had the balls to (initially) not publish an otherwise finished album just because they weren’t happy with it. Name one other band that would do that with the climate of today’s music industry.
A: Swedish duo Obitus did that with the still unreleased 2001 album “Sonnilon”. And while we are on that subject it’s worth noting that while this reviews main attraction “The march of the drones” released in 2009, the band actually recorded the majority of it in 2005. So one would naturally presume these dudes play some kind of funeral doom, right? I mean heck, they even have the word “drone” in the title of the fucken album!
Well stop drawing conclusions, because this is as far from slow as you can get. “The march of the drones” is a one song (divided into 7 different tracks and 3 different sections) 44 minute long slab of relentless pseudo-melodic black metal with a couple of industrial-tingled sample-interludes. I think someone called them “technical black metal” once, which actually sums up Obitus general sound pretty accurately. Anders Ahlbäck – also known as i-play-all-the-instruments-dude – nails every single note here with a staggering speed and execution.
Of course, just playing well gets you nowhere (unless your name is Brain Drill, that is). Lucky for our hearing organs, Obitus certainly have the composition skills to back up their frenetic bashing of instruments. Key words here are rage, rage, rage and some more rage. Rage in the excellent (and slightly melodic) riffing, rage in the drumming and rage on the bass. You can even hear the craving for total annihilation of society in every breath vocalist Johan Huldtgren takes, regardless if it’s a deep growl or high pitched shriek.
When all of these factors are combined – if you forgot what they where, read the words above – what comes out could be considered the creeping apocalypse of modern society in a nearly hypnotic disc form. Now let’s just hope it won’t take that long until the real thing actually happens.
- Information
- Released: Eerie Art Records
- Label: 2009
- Website: www.obitus.org
- Band
- Johan Huldtgren: vocals
- Anders Ahlbäck: instrumentation
- Tracklist
- 01. Sacrificial abolishment
- 02. Now we’re nothing
- 03. The march of the drones
- 04. Hypothesis
- 05. Inconsequential
- 06. The endless void
- 07. The drone marches on
