Pestilence — Obsideo

Pestilence is one of those bands that has gone through countless line-up changes, stylistic changes and a long hiatus.  Originating in the Netherlands in the mid eighties, the band now consist of international members.  At one point this group even incorporated jazz fusion elements into their music (seemingly a bad mix with death metal), fortunately we hear none of this in the new disc "Obsideo". 

What we do hear is fast and heavy chugga chugga metal with lots of part changes, blast beats and all, but few changes in regards to dynamics, for the most part this disc stays in the same musical territory without feeling the need to deviate from it.  The lyrics are growled out in typical fashion acting more like a musical texture than a main feature.  Most of the songs begin so similarly that you can easily do you own remix by just skipping around the tracks in a playlist, this technique actually yielded some interesting results. 

 
While this record is totally not my thing I do have a hard time knocking it completely, because it is well executed and does in fact have some pretty interesting moments (like opening up the record with medical sounds).  But it falls into a category of music that I simply call "too many notes" music, bringing to mind Zappa if he had a extreme metal sound.  It is obvious that the musicians are really good, but sometimes it pays to hold back a little, or rather just because the part works there doesn't mean it should be there.  Since my gripes with this record are for the most part stylistic I want to point out that the production is well done, and the cover art is pretty cool too.  As for the music, it’s just not my cup of tea, but I'm sure fans of technical yet brutal death Metal will dig it.