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GORGUTS
Obscura

Olympic Recordings (1998)
Rating: 9.5/10

Hard to believe that as metal succumbed to the grunge invasion in the 90s, that death metal would soldier on, damaging crops in its wake and leaving no prisoners, and most certainly not bowing to any trends.

Canada’s Gorguts may have begun life in 1989 as a rather formulaic death metal band that were soon swept away by the Floridian competition, but their 1998 opus, Obscura, remains one of the genre’s most frightening releases.

This album really is a nightmarish assault on the senses, a jarring experience that sees the band combine complex structures and avant-garde rhythms, fronted by the hoarse throat of founder member Luc Lemay. This is one of those rare masterpieces that at times defies all logic, a record so perverse in its intricacy and so down-tuned and harsh that it makes for a harrowing listen, but it sure as hell forms a punishing web that drags in the audience, ties them up in knots, before spitting them back out.

Lemay and Steeve Hurdle’s guitars pummel, twist, cavort and yawn, creating soundscapes so alien within the genre, and yet somehow accessible, whilst the gargantuan drums of Patrick Robert batter the ears, kicking hard, fast then jerking the cranium.

The title track is a smorgasbord of weirdness, a fearsome track of epileptic proportions, where the band use a variety of instruments – such as a viola – to create their extra-terrestrial environment.

‘The Art Of Sombre Ecstasy’ is led by a trigger drum and Lemay’s distinctive and hoarse screams, as the band plough the depths of human sorrow, whilst the three-minute ‘Subtle Body’ is probably the only track on the record that resembles what could be deemed as ‘normal’ death metal. The rest of the platter is a behemoth that climaxes into the middle track, ‘Clouded’, with its doom-laden plod, the song never once moving faster than a tortoise.

Obscura is, put simply, a work of genius, that some may find too distressing. Real death metal fans seeking something different than the usual blast beat experience will find this album quite an adventure, something akin to the written works of H.P. Lovecraft as a true demented journey into the realms of audible madness.

Neil Arnold

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