Having basically fooled around somewhat in their beginning stages, Obsidian started taking the playing of their Metal seriously when drummer Melle Kramer joined guitarists/ singers Simon Lawford & Sjaak Kassies , and bassist Glen Loupias In 2002. This renewed line-up enabled the band to experiment and create their own style of Progressive Death Metal in the vein of bands like Meshuggah , Scarve , Cynic , and Opeth . Along the way, the guys recorded two demos, played a couple of bigger venues ( Melkweg in Amsterdam; Mezz in Breda; P60 in Amstelveen) supporting more established bands like Textures and Gorefest , and went into the finals of the Amsterdam Popprijs and Metal Battle band contests.
But the band still felt incomplete with the guitarists having to share their attention to the vocal part of the band and feeling this task should befall a separate member altogether. So, the search for a lead vocalist started and tentatively ended when former Amethyst frontman Serge Regoor joined the band. The band then recorded their first full-length album (with mixing and mastering done by Textures ' Jochem Jacobs ) Emerging , which was released in 2006. But shortly after releasing the album, the band & their singer decided to part ways. A new singer was quickly found in Robbe K (full name Robbert Kok ) of Disavowed & Arsebreed . The private release met with positive feedback from the press, and eventually Rusty Cage showed their interest in signing the band, doing so in March 2007. For their first official release, the band and label decided on a fully remastered version of the Emerging album, fitted with new vocals by Robbie .
Which brings us to the material at hand, and I must say that the "Progressive Death Metal" tag the label puts on the album is a description I can certainly live with. Great alternating/ intertwining guitar leads & rhythms bring a complexity which is however never without melody, and Robbie is a really decent growling/ screaming Death Metal vocalist. Things were recorded clear enough for us to actually understand what he's saying (a feat facilitated by the lyrics in the booklet), and there's even a couple of moments where he does some clean vocals too ( "Kobalt" & "Time" ). With "Progressive" in the musical description, you can imagine that a lot of attention is put on the music itself, meaning the songs have quite an instrumental content, and the album's title track is even a very nice (calmer) instrumental track altogether. With a length of 6:40, it's also the longest track, and the 8 tracks together get us an allbum length of almost 45 minutes! 45 minutes well spent in consecutive listening sessions, because each session reveals yet more underlaying details.
Check out the band's website obsidian.nu/noise, or myspace.com/obsidianrocks for a taster of the two tracks (the album opening " Footprints" and the aforementioned "Tims" ) posted there. Let those samples move around n your mind a couple of times, and I'm sure you'll agree that, while Obsidian is not yet at the same level as their main influences, they sure are well underway, and their album IS worth getting!
85/100 Tony.
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