Obscuring Veil - Fleshvoid to Naught (2019)

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This album has me floored currently. A monolithic slab of avant-garde black metal with a personality crisis and a gargantuan amount of enigma wafting around itself. Obscuring Veil is wholly comprised of venerable musicians from around Europe all cut from varying fabrics of musical cloth, and the musicianship is starkly reflected on each harrowingly twisting track. Obscuring Veil combined is the minds of Wormlust, Death Fetichist, Gnaw Their Tongues, Nattsol, Ævangelist, Ljáin, Craft, Chaos Moon, etc. etc. There is notably some accounting for taste to be made, and yet something created that is bigger than the sum of its parts.

I can throw a bunch of adjectives your way, but I'll distill it all down to this, Fleshvoid to Naught is suffocatingly abrasive, tragically heavy, magnificently eerie, devastatingly hard to digest and devoid of all commonality. I'm all in.

Obscuring Veil - Fleshvoid to Naught (bandcamp)

Sigh - In Somniphobia (2012)

I fucking love these oddballs from Japan! In Somniphobia is what you would expect from Sigh, a nightmarish composition of avant-garde black metal with a flare for the dramatic and occult. 20 years of existence. Fucking yup, they still got it.

It has been stated by the band : "Seriously 'In Somniphobia' could be our last album". I can understand ending 20 years on a high note, but judging by this latest release, they still have a little steam left. That album art deserves a nod of praise as well, just look at it, hard and well.

Grab if you like: Le Grand Guignol, Arcturus, Kadenzza

In Somniphobia (Rapidshare, Password: GT)

Peste Noire - L'Ordure À L'État Pur (2011)

Oh man. Oh fucking man. In the first song Casse, Pêches, Fractures et Traditions, at about 4:53 to the end of the song is utter brilliance, those 6 minutes alone are worth the download.

en français

Sigh - Gallows Gallery (2005) & Scenes From Hell (2010)

Sigh, a band that continually amuses me with how effortlessly they genre blend. They don't just incorporate many different styles, they do it properly and in a way that is aesthetically pleasing. Sigh, is not fucking scared to change it up on an album, and they do so often.

So, if you were wondering why I chose Gallows Gallery and Scenes From Hell as a means for a half-assed comparison. The reason being, not only are both of these releases incredibly brilliant and flawlessly executed, but they are vastly different from each other.

Gallows Gallery is quirky and extremely catchy. Vocals are mainly clean and often chanted in a swing style sort of way. Nothing feels overly dark, in fact everything sounds oddly celebratory and cheerful.

Scenes From Hell is dark and full of grandiose. Vocals are mainly screamed, shrieked or growled. It is also catchy, but in a different approach. The interludes are absolutely brilliant and are the driving force behind the melody, adding to the maniacal deranged Art Deco manner. 

Both are different, both are brilliant. Without them, to me you are a professional dicksmith.

Gallows Gallery

Scenes From Hell