I obviously don’t get out enough because living down the road in Cambridge, I was surprised I hadn’t heard about Obscene Entity from Bury St Edmunds. I now know that the band has been around since 2011 and this album follows a self-titled debut EP which was released in 2012.
To be honest, “Lamentia” left me a bit cold when I first started listening to it. It’s from the classic annals of death metal. There’s plenty of aggression, murderous intent in the riffage and growls. My problem was that I’d heard it before. The sound is a bit deadened, and doesn’t match up to the expanses of death metal imagination from Poland and Asian countries which I’m more used to listening to. I will say though that the more I’ve listened to it, the more interesting it’s become. The title track is the jewel in the crown, deviating from the template and now generating excitement. So too “Insanity Binds” which follows has an intensity and energy which I didn’t feel on the earlier tracks. It’s strange how good death metal is like a musical equivalent of strangulation or asphyxiation, and “Insanity Binds” achieves this. “Shadow of Nergal” blazes on, breaking neatly in the middle but more importantly wandering into dark and dangerous musical territory where the weak shouldn’t go. It has a great crazy section at the end – that’s more like it. Anarchy is good in death metal. The only track exceeding five minutes in length is the final one “Stripped of All and Everything”. To now, it’s been a bit of a rush to get to the end. An insistent riff with little twists stand behind it, but it’s an exercise in persistent bludgeoning, which I thought was disappointing.
The essential ingredients are there in “Lamentia” and it’s a good portrayal of death metal, but all in all I thought it lacked enough imagination to really stand out.
(6/10 Andrew Doherty)
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