Enthral- Obtenebrate
'Obtenebrate' is the first album in almost nine years for Norwegian based Enthral. Creating a cold, yet clear Black Metal atmosphere, the group embodies the likes of bands such as recent Marduk to create ugly, haunting vocals with a heavy, but highly enjoyable atmosphere. This is a new kind of 'freezing' as opposed the low-fi, icy kind of music that lots of Black Metal musicians perform to get a kvlt feeling. Enthral are more attuned to creating catchy rhythms such as on "The Gospel Of Woe" that seem to carry on forever (some of the tracks are epic) but weave and flow like a roller coaster, sometimes just Thrash based chuggings or more melodic, slower- almost Doom-like- passages that are dark and carry that same creepy feeling that the vocals can usually invoke. Having the guy sounding like he's vomiting into the mic. is chilling enough, but factor in that this is some pretty philosophical Black Metal makes it even more interesting as it is not the typical "All Hail Satan" kind of themes that just blares in the face or ear; insteal Enthral's work is subtle, almost like that of Deathspell Omega but not as hectic or random at times. The music here isn't one to be completely Avant-Garde and suddenly change from heavy to just soft, ambient moments, but it stays steady throughout the entire album.
Other highlights include the crawling "Within The Tomb" which is very guitar focused and has a lot more melodies that break up the sudden machine gun fire from the drums that just hit over and over with the snarled vocals. "7th Wave" has a bit more of a march to it that should have been put on "Death's Drum," which first may lead fans to thinking it is going to be a highly percussive track, but instead ends up being pretty middle of the road and similar to sounding like "Pallbearer." The outro of the song is very slow and excellent to keep up that whole mournful tone of the darker side of this kind of Black Metal, and very similar to how Marduk recently arranged their music on an album like 'Wormwood,' but still to have a thumping, beat of doom similar to how Deathspell Omega opened up 'Kenose' would have been a fantastic expectation to live up to on a track like that. Still, while this album isn't so much a mix of high and slow points, track by track it stays steady in a comfortable zone that most Black Metal fans can get into, and even the Avant-Garde fans might find this appealing because it isn't typical; rather rhythmic and dripping with a thoughtful hatred that they may not have seen before.
Other highlights include the crawling "Within The Tomb" which is very guitar focused and has a lot more melodies that break up the sudden machine gun fire from the drums that just hit over and over with the snarled vocals. "7th Wave" has a bit more of a march to it that should have been put on "Death's Drum," which first may lead fans to thinking it is going to be a highly percussive track, but instead ends up being pretty middle of the road and similar to sounding like "Pallbearer." The outro of the song is very slow and excellent to keep up that whole mournful tone of the darker side of this kind of Black Metal, and very similar to how Marduk recently arranged their music on an album like 'Wormwood,' but still to have a thumping, beat of doom similar to how Deathspell Omega opened up 'Kenose' would have been a fantastic expectation to live up to on a track like that. Still, while this album isn't so much a mix of high and slow points, track by track it stays steady in a comfortable zone that most Black Metal fans can get into, and even the Avant-Garde fans might find this appealing because it isn't typical; rather rhythmic and dripping with a thoughtful hatred that they may not have seen before.