OBSCENE – THE INHABITABLE DARK - Review by Varg The Mighty

The world is finally able to hear the debut album of American Old-School Death Metal band Obscene, and it is a very good piece of metal, with every song having its own sound, none falling into the same style and definitely no fillers.
Starting strong with “Without Honor And Humanity”, this album offers classic death metal riffs in the style of Deicide, Obituary, Morbid Angel or any other great death metal band of the USA, holding on to the extremeness of the style while not ending up as another Brutal Death group, it also reminds of acts like Grave and Entombed in some songs, with guitar solos in songs like “The Dumping Grounds” bringing you straight back to the 80’s. You may even not notice that they are American. The drums have the double bass particularly highly recorded, and their not too fast tempo may remind of Bolt Thrower in songs like “Black Hole of Calcutta”.

What reall y makes this band from other modern metalheads playing OSDM is Kyle Shaw’s vocals. This isn’t your common guttural voice, but a more broken and forced voice similar to At The Gates or Macabre, much like Rotting Christ or Burzum in the Black Metal scene, but converted into Death Metal. Although these vocals are very unique and give an interesting touch to the music, some may find the whole album tiring.
The album finishes with the title track, an almost 7 minutes epic that doesn’t have much to do with the other songs, but that in my opinion is the best song they have at the moment. It would really be interesting to see them do similar songs in their next albums.
This is an overall good album, with a cover that instantly lets you know their old-school influence and highly recommendable if you’re in the mood to headbang to some new OSDM not quite the same as the other modern bands.

Varg The Mighty