Obscura

Anyone else out there getting Obscura and Origin mixed up? The cover art, those album names, the technical death metal, but Yanks Origin never incorporate clean vocals into seven-plus-minute tunes like Dutch dudes Obscura do here ― on the first song! "Vortex Omnivium" follows up that ambitious, ass-kicking opener with crazy technical guitar riffs and awesome blast beats that just come out of nowhere, overtop a riff that changes for no one and no beat. It rules, and when the band take a bit of a breather for "Ocean Gateways," chugging along in mid-tempo awesomeness, it's hard to not think everything about this band rules. Even the relentless, "check me out," fretless bass stuff is awesome, although it threatens to tire on tunes like "Velocity," where the band experiment like they're on Inside Out Records. But then "Prismal Dawn" (not an Abysmal Dawn cover) dishes out riffs that would make Gary Holt stoked, and the epic "A Transcendental Serenade," the band's very own "To Live is to Die," is a near-instrumental, bat-shit crazy guitar fest. Did we mention the awesome guitar solo and Tom G. Warrior-esque death grunt in "Euclidean Elements"? Did we mention this rules?