COSMOGENESIS

With an album cover of a slum version of the Death Star exploding, Obscura's Cosmogenesis lays on the sci-fi shtick thick with lots of tunes about planetary sized spheres orbiting and doing their thing. It also showcases a whole lot of technical capability, from the shredding guitars, crazed yet tight drumming, to the unusually up-front fretless bass playing. You won't be hearing these sort of vocals performing Aida or The Marriage of Figaro anytime soon, but the varied forms of growling from guttural to higher registered wails works with the music in general. Unlike a decent portion of modern tech death metal bands, I actually enjoy this release a great deal, and consider it one of the best of the new millennium.

What sets this apart from most of the competition is the balance between showmanship and composition. Too often these sort of bands are so busy trying to show us how fast they can perform some tired arpeggio scales over blastbeats that they forget to write a decent riff, let alone song. Cosmogenesis, on the other hand, tosses out all kinds of catchy riffs to blend in with the wankery and even reutilizes them within a tune to actually form songs with a memorable structure and sound foundation. As a result, many of these songs linger and resonate after listening, particularly the proggish, slow and creative instrumental "Orbital Elements", the ferocious "Centric Flow" that segues into a memorable majestic epilogue, and "Incarcerated" with its blatantly catchy opening riff. There's really not a bad song in the batch music-wise.

I know there are some metal fans who decry this album for its lack of "brutality" and prominent bass presence. To me, there are thousands of bands that are brutal with the bass buried under chugged low-end guitar riffs and double bass drums, so it was refreshing to hear something like this concerning sonic qualities. The clear production doesn't really favor any instrument, but the fact that the bass is featured alongside other instruments instead of being buried in the back can make one think they're listening to some sort of Primus on a death binge recording. It's not really the case though, yet it adds a whole new layer of melody to the loud yet progressive music.

Getting used to the vocals was my only issue, in fact only the guttural ones took time to deal with as the more mid-ranged growls were excellent in regards to how they fit within the maelstrom of frenzied instrumentation. There's also a few somewhat psychedelic patches of clean vocals sprinkled here and there to add a couple of more beacons of interest.

I actually have not listened to their followup release Omnivium yet, but after spending a healthy amount of time with this album, I'm looking forward to hearing what else the band has to offer (barring their first album that thanks to lukewarm reviews I avoided). The 'mysteries of the universe' subject matter seems to mesh well with this shiny form of tech death, and so far Cosmogenesis is almost like a blueprint as to why it works.