Review: Obscura Amentia “The Art Of The Human Decadence”

Obscura Amentia “The Art Of The Human Decadence”
Sliptrick records

It seems that in Novara (city with roots yet in Ancient Rome) there’s quite good scene with some interesting bands. Well, as on my orthodox standards, a duet in such configuration never was, isn’t and never will be a band. For me it’ll always be a project because it’s physically impossible for someone play all instruments in the same time on a gig. And that’s just like that in this case. Black Charm plays guitar, bass, drums and keyboards while Hel is only a vocalist.

Anyhow, they decided to found OBSCURA AMENTIA in 2005. And let’s be honest that their discography isn’t very impressive if it’s about number of releases. But since quality was, is  and always will be much more important than number it’s any accusation. Contrary – I was always thinking that it’s better to release good stuff every two or three years than release wishy-washy, disappointing stuffs every year! Well, I didn’t hear two first albums (“The Darkest Dream” – 2010 and “Ritual” – 2014) of Italians, but it seems that this one validate my thesis. We haven’t here any immortal composition, but it doesn’t change the fact that we have here a piece of interesting music.

Maybe, from purely technical point of view, there’s nothing jaw-dropping. Riffs are rather easy and repeatable. But in the same time they’re absolutely not changeless! I’d even say that as on music which presents OBSCURA AMENTIA they’re very variable as well. It happens really a lot on this field and of course you need to listen to music with right dose of concentration. Black Charm plays guitar also melodically for sure. That aren’t any sweet melodies and there’s always power in them. Drumming is various, too. Well, in comparison with guitar it’s more static. It doesn’t mean that we have here  with unvarying, tame beating to do. There’re some passages and so on. In general music is in, I’d say, middle-slow tempo. Keyboards I hear only in “Broken” and “Ananke”, by the way.

Everything creates quite majestic music and vocal of Hel is only helpful in this work. This is the kind of growling which’s rather characteristic for music like that. Anyway, I’m almost sure that many of you will be surprised and will don’t want to believe if I’ll say that Hel is a (judging from pic) small girl.

If somebody after reading this review still doesn’t know what sub-genre of Metal presents OBSCURA AMENTIA then I’ll tell this directly (even if I only after the name was almost sure what I’ll hear – and I’m sure that every Metalhead who listen to this music longer than two weeks did the same): we have here piece of majestic Black Metal here! I can hear influences of other kinds of music, but they’re not so “visible”, maybe except touch of Doom Metal in the vein of for example some Swedish band which’s name. You’ll have to check it out to get know this.