Belgium's Black Metal crushers are back with a new album, and this it feels like it is in the right place. With Enthroned's previous effort of 'Pentagrammaton,' it felt extremely lacking without the Orthodox-mocking elements and dark atmosphere brought on through keyboards and samples while still retaining a very furious pace. It was furious and heavy as Black Metal should be, but without its unique touches it just made Enthroned seem like an average release that bands a dime a dozen are doing every month. 'Obsidium' puts things back in perspective. This time Enthroned bring back the rather fuzzy tone to bring a shroud of darkness over all their music, obscuring the vocals and guitars a little for an ominous feeling of horror and twisted uncertainty while not being too faded out like a Xasthur album. As evident on the opening "Sepulchred..." they thankfully bring back the choirs and chants which were a huge staple ever since they made their mark with 'Carnage In Worlds Beyond,' which was their first step outside the typical high speed Darkthrone copied sound that so many bends can tend to follow. While they haven't brought back the epic, all these tracks still live up to being worthy of part of the Enthroned discography.
Other tracks like "Horns Aflame" are more lacking in the choir parts, but feature other things like Doom influenced interludes chock full of melody and darkness that would make fans of Lunar Aurora extermely happy to find something similar. The vocals still sound as raw as ever but not quite too high pitched or too low to give that perfect balance that definitely make it stand out as Black Metal. Sometimes here and there the riffs can seem like they are being repeated over a bit too much, especially with the openings between "The Final Architect" and "Petraolevm Saliva." Fortunately, about halfway into the song the differences shine right through with "Architect" featuring slow interlude passages and "Saliva" including even some clean vocals for a slight moment with an extremely rhythmic pounding section of drums that feel almost like a militant march. And true to Enthroned tradition, the closing track usually is the stand out with either an epic or atmospheric proportion. With "Thy Blight Vacuum" Enthroned slowly churns out riffs over a spoken word section that merges perfectly with its dark tones right before exploding into the faster sections before slowing down again with the keyboards having a human tone of sounding like voices rather than music. Overall, this album makes up for any mistakes Enthroned have made in the past as it shows that they are truly one of the masters of 'Orthodox Black Metal' in the Metal world today.
