Obscene Entity: "Lamentia"

Ok, it's time to see what all the ranting about this band is all about.They have been around since 2011, but their newest album is making a buzz for the British band on the inner webs. The first notes tell me they have warmer more organic sound than you typically think of death metal having. I like the way the vocals are layered. The opener doesn't have me convinced this is the second coming of Morbus Chron, but some similarities can be heard, though for death metal they start off a little more original not pulling from the usual influences. "Hymns of the Faithless" finds the band conforming to the aggression the genre is known for and adhering to a meatier and more roaring sound both vocally and sonically. "Black Blood" finds the band speeding along the normal carnal road that death metal typically winds down, with a little more more dissonance at the edges. This more dissonant edges comes further out of the shadows on the following song  "Euphoric Vanity". On "Black Blood" the nuances in the drumming are the only thing that stands out to me.

There is a blasting animalistic thrashing energy to the title track. The blasting is almost blackened at certain points. The vocals begin sticking to the lower growl and the layering I liked on the opening song becomes less frequent. Midway into the song the guitar becomes layered with a melodic cleaner passage. The double bass is drilled in with bullet point precision. The drums play around the riff to "Insanity Bird" giving a more Gwar like thrash to the song, before blasting off. They do command a powerful chug at times. Fittingly there is more of a black metal attack to the thrashing of " Shadow of Nergal". There are creative sparkles in the murk of dense riffing. The double bass and staccato riffing dominate the song. The guitar solo has a more Morbid Angel organized chaos to it.

They close the album with the more straight forward death metal attack of "Stripped of All and Everything". The dry coarse vocals fill the gaps, there is a call and response with the vocals at around the mid way point. There is something thrashy about the song that makes me hesitant to define this band as death metal. The song descends into a droning throb. With death metal it's hard to stand out from the pack with a new sound, they certainly make more of a stab at it with this album. I'll give it a 7.5, not something that is going to make it to my iPod, but I'll give their future releases a shot since one day I think they will really embrace the sound they are looking for and not feel the need to conform to the boundaries of the emotionally monochrome landscape of death metal that takes the right kind of hate to prove effective.