Band:	Obscure Sphinx
Album:	Emovere
Style:	Doom metal, Post-metal, Sludge metal
Release date:	January 06, 2025
A review by:	musclassia

01. Scarcity Hunter
02. As I Stood Upon The Shore
03. Nethergrove

Towards the end of last year, I reviewed a debut album from a Polish post-metal band that had me thinking of Obscure Sphinx, and left me pondering just what those guys were up to these days. Right on cue, they’re back with a bang.

One of numerous bands whose existence I became aware of solely thanks to Metal Storm, Obscure Sphinx made a big impression on me over a decade ago with Void Mother, and continued to impress me with (the slightly less heralded) Epitaphs. However, within a year of that album’s release, both the founding drummer and longtime guitarist of the band had departed, and this one-two hit evidently curtailed their momentum; while I’m not aware of the band outright announcing a hiatus, the only signs of their existence in the past 8 years had been the release of two live albums during the pandemic years, both of which were of performances recorded in 2018. Out of nowhere, they dropped a new single Scarcity Hunter at the tail end of 2024, and have swiftly followed it up with their first serious release in almost a decade.

Emovere is sadly but a 30-minute EP rather than a full album, but it is a strong exhibition of why the news of its existence and Obscure Sphinx’s revival has caused waves of excitement. While ex-guitarist Tomasz Jońca’s departure appears to have been a permanent one, drummer Mateusz Badacz has returned to the group he formed, and he also handled tracking and pre-mixing for the release. He’s done a fine job on both fronts (alongside Sebastian Has on the production end, who mixed and mastered the record), as Emovere sounds excellent: ominous in its quieter moments, hefty when the distortion is let fully loose, and allowing the various textures to all shine through in the more elaborate passages.

While having plenty in common, the three songs do each bring a little something different to the table, and it is that previously released single “Scarcity Hunter” that sets things away with a real sense of heft. Vocalist Zofia Fraś has often been the primary element of Obscure Sphinx’s sound that captures newcomers’ attention, and her full range is exhibited during “Scarcity Hunter”; a brooding bass-driven introduction is accompanied by wordless ethereal melodic vocal lines, while the subsequently chunky sludge riffing gives the cue for her impressive range of harsh vocals to be unleashed. The combination of muddy heaviness with faint layers of synths and cleaner-toned chords works really well on the instrumental front, as do the multiple sonic retreats and rebuilds that occur during “Scarcity Hunter”. The latter and longer of these, which dominates the second half of the song, is exceptionally well balanced between the drums, guitars and bass, and Fraś uses this opportunity to exhibit her clean vocal range, from tender singing to then belting out notes in a really high register.

While I wouldn’t say Obscure Sphinx ever sound especially blackened, there are some tremolo’d guitar parts, particularly on “As I Stood Upon The Shore”, that veer in that direction in the way that Redwood Hill or Process Of Guilt have done on occasion, but conversely this track is also perhaps the most overtly melodic of the trio here, with a recognizable chorus and occasional up-tempo rhythms. There’s also an expansion on the use of wordless vocals that first appear at the beginning of “Scarcity Hunter”; this time, this ethereal style is used for a prolonged passage in tandem with some really pleasant clean and distorted guitar elements that evolve in a vey satisfying manner.

The piece de resistance on Emovere, however, is 13-minute closer “Nethergrove”; anyone angling for a reprise of the patient expansiveness of past efforts like “The Presence Of Goddess” will find a lot to enjoy in this very gradual and deliberate composition. From ambient beginnings, there’s very slow escalation of layers and elements right through to the 4-minute mark, and even when the distortion is fully delivered here, the band opt initially for a really enjoyably languid and brooding riff approach. There’s another long build in the second half of the song, once again with really impressive texturing, and when the chunkier distortion finally kicks in, Fraś sticks to a clean tone to deliver powerful, haunting melodies that very effectively complement the escalating guitars and drums.

Obscure Sphinx have really teased listeners with Emovere; much like Blindead 23’s Vanishing, it does enough to remind you why you’ve been missing these guys during their absence, but doesn’t quite sate the appetite. Hopefully it won’t be long before there’s more music of similar quality to savour from the group (and one can only dream of a UK live appearance), because the world is truly ready for more Obscure Sphinx if it’s going to keep being this great.