review: Obscene

Obscene

The Inhabitable Dark

Blood Harvest

June 12th, 2020

The Indiana, U.S. band is a living witness to the durability of traditional death metal and the classics. Eight songs in some thirty-two minutes, this squad is not messing around. One of the best things about the album is the direct, immediate intelligibility of the songs that fans of the genre will understand without the need for overthinking or super long explanations. This is memorable music and it gets to the point very quickly. This type of efficiency is commendable not just because it works well, but because they have the skill and stubborn mentality to stay on message in a disciplined way. In essence, the band is asking, do you want traditional death metal that you can remember and bang your head to? If your answer is yes, then you’ve come to the right place.

In 2020 there are many styles of death metal. Bands that are super technical, very minimalistic, super computerized, very garage-like, some fast, some slow, on and on. What the Indiana band offers is classic-style death metal in 2020, without going off on a tangent trying to be super raw, dissonant or progressive or trying to turn the original idea into something else. This is what they promised with their debut recording in 2017: death metal that you can bang your head to! Death metal with songs that you can understand as songs, not as experiments. The vocals, the sound, it’s all here on this debut album just like they promised on the four songs from several years ago, except that now the sound quality is clearer and the songs seem smoother, demonstrating that their songwriting has benefitted from the experience of the intervening years. In short, if you want no-nonsense, traditional and proud death metal, and songs that hit right away, then consider listening to the album one time, maybe two times, but it is very likely that you won’t require a third time in order to decide whether to support this band. Git’r dun.

The Inhabitable Dark by Obscene