OBSKURIA

This is a surprising result of relatively spontaneous jam sessions by some musicians which joined during the Trip-In-Time festival 2006 in Mannheim/Germany. Primarily initiated by the german World In Sound label DRAGONWYCK's Tom Brehm, the complete staff of the peruvian heavy psych band LA IRA DE DIOS, Winnie Rimbach-Sator, keyboarder of the german KARMIC SOCIETY and other musicians came together and recorded ten hours of heavy psychedelic and kraut drenched songs with some blues and punk additions. The essence of this instrumental recordings later was overdubbed with some vocals and provided with a provoking concept about the destruction of mother earth in 2012 (not far away!) and the search for a new mankind's home on the distant planet Obskuria.

So if you're familiar with some punk bands you'll probably recognize that I am my own god originally is played by the band DAY GLO ABORTIONS. A punching rock 'n' roll startup/warmup for the album indeed. Depending on the story the title seems to imply an impeachment at this widespreaded mode of thinking. The fantastic METALLICA cover For Whom The Bell Tolls follows in a special krautrock meets BLACK SABBATH mood provided with a hypnotic groove plus mystic organ. Now the first self-composed song I see is psych pure with good vocals and a dramatic behaviour supported by Matthias Schäuble (guitar, vocals) who is also the engineer and co-producer of the album. Winnie Rimbach-Sator convinces with his sensitive keyboard work. Later the band intones a DOORS reminiscence combined with a short freak out - definetely a highlight of the album.

The next minimalistic cover Come Together is somewhat nice but not that important for me wheras the following Breakfast suite and Forbidden look are really good heavy prog tracks creeping up on the album's summit. Essence of its own is to see literally - for me the song is definetely the essence of this interesting project - for others maybe boring and of no interest. A wonderful nineteen minute psych/kraut jam where the OBSKURIA members are proving their talents with a somnabulistic interaction - I would say a masterpiece - grooving and meandering along dominated by spacey guitars, hammond and a fantastic rhythm branch. The bluesy Turn your face is a noticable contrast to the improvisation suite which is continued by the title song Discovery of Obskuria now partially with more tempo and a special dramatic art once again.

The last two short songs are attracting attention in a completely different way. Die Die My Darling is another punk piece originally provided by the MISFITS and with contributions by female vocalist Kristin Shey. The world is gone with a happy flavour (contrary - isn't it?) and vocals reminding at Tom Jones is written by german Peter Thomas who is responsible for several movie sound tracks like the Sci-Fi series 'Raumpatrouille Orion'.

As for the story I would better prefer and help to save this planet instead of leaving and otherwise not being able to enjoy the new output of such exciting bands like Obskuria anymore. Anyway - this album is a must have for fans of the psychedelic/space genre without a doubt. Check it out - a follower is announced for the year 2008.