OBSCURA

Gorguts' Obscura is a musical experience unlike anything you've ever heard before, for better or worse. Guitarist, front-man, and mastermind Luc Lemay and company forced sounds out of their instruments that I don't think anybody ever would have thought to commit to recording before they came along. At times, the music is impenetrably dense. At others, the music has some surprisingly accessible hooks, certainly more accessible than I would have expected from an album famed for pioneering Avant Gard technical death metal.

While the reason for this album's legacy and impact should be abundantly clear to anyone who listens to it, I personally cannot rate it any higher than I did. I appreciate music which utilizes a diversity of voices to communicate an idea. Not only is that the best way to break the monotony of a record, its also, in my view, a higher form of artistic expression. Obscura's sound, however, is too monolithic. (Or maybe, it only sounds monolithic to my ear because it has yet to be baptized in the fires of the level of hell reserved for the insane where this record clearly originated?)