Obelyskkh :" Ultimate Grace of God"

 

This German metal band marries the lumbering crunch of sludged-out doom with crusty punk attitude.This album was teased as early as 2019 so it has been at least 4 years in the making now. Some of the angular twists and turns the riffs make show their more dexterity-induced sense of adventure. The production of this album works well and is very natural in how the sounds are captured. They have a prog-like sense of wonderment when the songs sprawl out. Their fifth album took five years to bring to fruition, so every note is well thought out. The vocals are more sung than just yelled. Thought that changes on the more abrasive and aggressive title track. Things get crazy as far as where the song goes. Not what I would expect from a German band. 

"Black Mother" finds the rough sonic crust edged on their brand of stomping sludge. Sludge has always been doom for punks and this album is another example of this. They are capable of summoning some creepy sounds, but it is just one color these songs are painted with. "Afterlife" takes three and a half minutes of atmosphere to build up into the metal driving the song. It rumbles in a pretty straightforward fashion. Even these more meat and potatoes moments of burly excess, as bookended with enough sonic emotion to balance it out. The riff going into "Universal Mother" has a darker doom like mood. It converges into a more head bang inducing groove. It feels more like "Souls at Zero" era Neurosis, with the creepy moodiness making it one of the album's best songs.  The flowing arrangement to this one has a superb sense of dynamics.  

The surreal dissonant blend of sounds that has proved to be this band's strength is further built upon with "Dog Headed God" even though it is more straight forward doomy rock. There is a 70s psyche rock feel to this. The strummed clean guitar used to create tension is very effective.     While some of these occult flavor desert rock sounds are familiar, they are given a unique spin into the shadows of this album. After the first two minutes of noisey ambiance the song actually kicks in. There is a proggy King Crimson like cadence to the verse that leads into the song, with the vocals chanting more. It evolves into a more doom like drone with the mood almost like goth rock with the funeral feel of the organs in the background, Artfully capturing sound but less captivating in terms of song structure.  I will give this album a 9.5, and see how it grows on, but it captures a unique mood to be sludge. This album is being dropped on Exile on Mainstream January 27th.