Band:	Obscuring Veil
Album:	Fleshvoid To Naught
Style:	Avantgarde metal, Black metal
Release date:	March 29, 2019
A review by:	RaduP

01. Abstraction
02. Do You Want To See The Knife I Used?
03. Obfuscation
04. Spirit Me Away, O Murdered Star

A car with members of Wormlust, Gnaw Their Tongues and Ævangelist stop by you on the street and tell you to "Get in, loser! We're deconstructing black metal!"

Supergroups are a weird thing to tackle since more often than not, the actual music doesn't live up to the hype of getting all the involved musicians together. Either there's not enough chemistry, or it feels like they're trying to outdo one another, or someone you may have been hyped for barely gets any part. Now, I'm not trying to say that Obscuring Veil bypasses all these pitfalls, but it certainly feels like it stands on its own feet better than Martröð. So besides H.V. Lyngdal, Mories and Matron Thorn, we have some lesser known musicians in Jarle Byberg on drums and Kabukimono on vocals.

And since I mentioned "deconstructing" black metal, you may have noticed that most of the musicians involved are known for black metal projects, but ones that don't really follow the usual formula. Here, they go a bit beyond that. Fleshvoid To Naught is black metal that feels played by free jazz musicians and then the master tapes were left in some abandoned hospital or some generic creepy haunted place so that I can make my haunted/nightmare analogy. You get it. Or rather, it sounds like black metal made with the logic of dreams.

The album has basically two tracks, both over ten minutes in runtime, with the other two tracks serving more as interludes that are either completely piano baser or piano/noise/vocals and the transitions between tracks does feel a bit jarring. The two tracks that are the bulk of the album channel all that free-form guitar dissonance and noise and vocals that feel either ghostly or hellish, the former clean and the rather not so much, both twisted beyond form and made to sound as far away as possible. Complete that with the drums which feel like they do a lot of the improvisational work and get their rightful place in the mix (I wish I could say the same thing about the bass) and you get a completely unnerving but psychedelic experience.

Yeah sure, I too wish it was a bit longer and that the flow was better, but I honestly expected to be even more disappointed and I wasn't. For what it's worth, it was great seeing how all these folks sound like together. Now let's hope I can say the same thing when Martröð finally release their debut full length.