OBSCURA

Otherwordly, dark, mysterious, Insane. All words that could describe Gorguts' avant-garde metal masterpiece Obscura, though the only word that does justice to what Obscura sounds like is "trip" a trip to a obscure world of dark greens, ethereal blues and deepest shades of black where dissonant and chaotic riffs shake the foundations of the grey earth your standing on.

What the music sound likes? impossible to describe; the only way you can really get to grips with the music on Obscura is too well... listen to it but I'll do my best. Obscura sounds like Robert Fripp rounded up an all-star line up of Captain Beefheart on vocals, Fred Firth on guitar and a couple Free-Jazz musicians and decided to make a death metal album. In other words its the RIO album of death metal; ignoring and breaking down self-imposed barriers and laughing in the face of cliché death metal bands. Over here at the prog archives we class Gorguts are extreme/tech prog but in all fairness it really deserves its own genre, a genre completely unprecedented.

Each song is a melting pot of psychotic atmosphere, incredible technicality and ridiculous originality, complemented by the insane composition talents of vocalist and guitarist Luc Lemmay (who actually had been studying violin and composing classical music at music school before writing this album) the guitars hop and around a bounce of each other playing irregular, dissonant and atonal chords that despite may sound "just like noise" on first listen actually lots of thought and underlying melody underneath the scratching and other avant- garde techniques.

The Drumming is PERFECT. Never does it go overboard and blast away to show off how technical he is instead he crafts melodic lines with his drums in some of the most complex time-signatures and tempos this side of Elvin Jones (speaking of Elvin Jones, despite the persistent use of double bass the drumming sounds like something straight out of free jazz) The bass is also excellent, adding a percussive colourful tone of massive and big bass chords that squash to the size of an ant. Don't take it the wrong way though, each musician is INSANELY technical but do not expect to hear sweep picked arpeggios or a guitar god showing off.

I really could go on for ages about this album but I'll just close with this. No, this album does not have lush symphonic keyboard solos but is certainly more progressive than any prog rock made within the last 30 years, Gorguts' has actually progressed and added an experimental and avant-garde tinge to the world of death meta, where as bands like Änglagård are called prog despite rehashing the same ideas from 40 years ago.

I pity anyone who does not find this album absolutely mindblowing, because they're missing out on the album of the decade.

Also listen to that Violin in Earthly Love... hmmm.