OBSCURA

After touring in support of their 1993 album The Erosion of Sanity, Gorguts was dropped from Roadrunner Records. After finding a new label in Olympic Recordings, Gorguts released Obscura in the summer of 1998. Conjuring up images of otherworldly horrors and monsters beyond comprehension, Obscura is a journey to the blackest and most obscure planes of reality. This is what madness would sound like if it was put in musical form. The drums are unrelentless in their assault, with some of the fastest and most technical playing I've ever heard. The riffs are very dissonant and unusual, complemented by the guitar's strange and heavy tone. The vocals sound genuinely disturbed, especially on Illuminatus, with tortured screaming and demonic barking. Lyrically, the album concerns meditations on death and reaching higher planes of being, which is a welcome change of the gore lyrics of most death metal. Undoubtedly one of the most chaotic, insane, and crushingly heavy albums ever produced, any fan of progressive or technical death metal should own this album.

Key tracks: Obscura, Earthly Love, The Carnal State, Nostalgia, Clouded, Subtle Body, Rapturous Grief, Illuminatus, Faceless Ones, Sweet Silence