Band:	Obsydian
Album:	The Grotesque Presage
Style:	Blackened death metal
Release date:	April 2010

01. Blastocyst Assassination
02. Indoctrinated
03. The Apocrypha
04. Seeds Of Desecration
05. Divine Sedition
06. The Rebirth
07. Poison Of The Pious
08. Apologue Of The Wicked
09. The Grotesque Presage
10. Slaves To The Resistance

Being so simple can be so complicated it seems. The basic skeleton of The Grotesque Presage is the most flat idea one can come up with as an artist in metal: Make it extreme. Lump all types of extreme metal into one sound. It's been thought of, it's been done (many, many times), yet this (relatively) new band from Nova Scotia somehow make it sound fresh and exciting.

The music (as stated before) is just so simple; mix old school death metal with old school thrash metal, throw in a few black metal riffs here and there, put it through some thick, heavy production, and that's it! Judging by the length of the songs (most clocking in at over 6 minutes), one may be misled into believing this is some more wanking from another bunch of prog wuss's trying to show some contrived masculinity, nope! This is just a fuck tonne of death metal. Obsydian manage to drop in from one heavy riff to another without drawing too much attention to it. Very similar to getting roofie'd - one minute you're in one spot, then the next thing you know you wake up in an alley with no pants, nor any recollection of how you got there, but I digress. Whole lotta riffs - no narcissistic prog behaviour - get it?

Simple to describe - simple to figure out if it's for you or not. It's a safe, pleasant mix of Death, Hail Of Bullets, a touch of Sodom, maybe throw in some Slayer here and there. Far from the most original music released on the planet, but guaranteed Obsydian know their job, and they know how to execute it flawlessly.