i pretty much didn't know anything about gorguts half a year ago. i learned about this canadian band when i was getting my first obscura album "akróasis". this german tech death band named itself after the third record of gorguts. in the process of listening a lot to the band obscura, i wanted to check the name giver as well. when i listened to the album "obscura" for the first time i found it too confusing. it didn't click with me and so it vanished from my focus.
two weeks ago i was on the hunt for some atheist vinyl, of which a copy will hopefully show up in the coming days, and i was killing some time on the tube listening to said band. in the next video side bar there was an icon showing gorguts' "obscura" cover and just to see if i might change my mind about the record, i gave it another chance. well, i did change my mind. especially when i read about the status of this release within the genre. it is widely considered to be one of the most influential records of the technical death metal genre and beyond.
to my big advantage century media did a re-press of "obscura" last year and still had copies in stock. the album actually didn't get the vinyl treatment in the first place in 1998 by olympic records. not until 2012 when war on music records from canada gave the world a vinyl version. so this is the second press, so to speak. i listened to "obscura" a handful of times by now and it's fascinating. it grows on me more everytime i spin it. it's definitely challenging and always hard on the edge of being too dissonant.
but the next second another break with some weird melodies or time signatures sets in and eases the complexity. "obscura" demands a lot of attention from the listener but it gives back pure art in equal measures. i always thought that the guy doing meditation on the cover had the head of a pig. from small pics on the net it looked a bit like that and i thought that was quite obscure and therefore matching the title. it's actually just an old, bearded man, haha. looks lovely on mint green vinyl (my cam makes them look a bit blue somehow). 200 copies made. century media. 2015.
