Welcome back to Canada for Occult Burial's, Hideous Obscure. Over the last four years these maniacal metalheads have been honing their craft through shows, splits, and demos. I have praised a few groups this year so far for taking a more heavy metal approach to blackened thrash, but I don't think any of them have quite reached the peak of nostalgia that these guys have. I put this record on, and I am truly transported back to the 80's. Were I to have pulled the wool over your eyes here and just said that this was some lost tape from the decade, I am quite sure many of you would have believed me.
The production is the key. It doesn't necessarily sound purposefully lo-fi. Rather, it sounds like what a professional recording with studio backing used to sound like at the time. In essence, Hideous Obscure is like an amalgam of Screaming for Vengeance, Seasons in the Abyss, and Venom's Welcome to Hell. With those albums in mind, it should come as no surprise that this album is a riffstravaganza. Thrash, heavy, and speed metal form Voltron to create some of the fastest, joyous riffs you're likely to hear.
"Blasted Death" is a great example, opening the album with barely any vocals at all. The axe does the talking. But things really get into the black metal edge of things towards the end, casting out some truly demented screeches before scratching out some chaotic Kerry King solos. This continues into the hooky "Black Adoration," which lives up to its name in worship to all things that spawned black metal. And let me also say that the drumming here is top notch when it comes to velocity. They power through these tracks like it's easy, and the production helps the performance really come alive.
But my personal favorite song is definitely "A Witch Shall Be Born." It opens with a fun little impromptu jam before the vocalist, much in the way of early Mayhem and Darkthrone, growls "eeerrr...Evil Metal!" Then it's all over. D-beat threatens to punch a hole in the bass drum while the tremolo-picking, howls, and classic rock solos tear a blackened void right into the studio mix. Like anything Occult Burial has to offer, the name of the game is doing honor to the greats.
After spending some extended time with this, I am convinced that the band is actually a group of time travelers sent from the past to undo the wrongs of modern production and cookie-cutter mainstream metal bands. At all costs, the only way they know how, Occult Burial rocks us jaded future-folk back to a time when things were only just beginning to get truly interesting when it came to the dark, loud, and shocking. This is an album everyone should take time with, but if you particularly enjoyed recent releases from Destroyer 666 or Rebel Wizard, take it one step further with Hideous Obscure.