One of the things that is usually guaranteed in life is that if you see Transcending Obscurity are releasing a new record, I will usually try to review it and it will generally be a banger, T.O are one of those labels that just seem to get what fans want & crave and always deliver with gusto! This week we have the third album Cult Of Uzura by mysterious French four-piece Skaphos.
There is a slow and ominous build up on opener album Cult Of Uzura but then out of nowhere we are firmly gripped by a blitzkrieg of buzzsaw blackened death metal guitars and a whirlwind of blasting drums all covered with some lo pitched growls mixed with a black metal screech in places and it takes you on a journey of discovery because even the mid song chanting doesn’t feel out of place or weird, it’s a blistering start, which slows slightly on One Eyed Terror for about 30 seconds before its back to the business of speed and savagery, they also manage to create a sense of unease and an almost dread with the way the guitars play off each other in this song, wonderfully inventive and a joy to listen too!
Mad Man And The Sea takes a more measured but none less hard-hitting approach, it incorporates elements of doom and mixes this into the song with an expert ease that is seamless in its delivery and really creates the sense that something special is happening here! Hypoxia has a wonderful crusty old school death metal sound that never strays to far from the unrelenting waves of violence that are being thrown at you from every turn.
This is how death metal really should sound, unpredictable, challenging and ultimately heavy as fuck, Abyssal Tower musically is a bit of a mix of blackened death and melodic death but also has all the dramatic goodness of black metal and to mix all of this together and not get sloppy or pretentious is a real challenge but Skaphos manage to pull it off with ease.
The pomp and ceremony carries directly into Echoes Of The Drowned but here we get a lot more doom elements incorporated into the sound and once again the way the different styles just bounce off each other is crafted in such a way that your not sure what would be coming next and this sort of intrigue is such a good thing to have because you don’t really see Of Shores And Dripping Souls coming because out of nowhere we have a soft acoustic mid album interlude, and it fits into the whole sound so far.
Normally I can do without this but here it adds another shade of colour to an already varied palette of course this doesn’t last long and Skaphism begins to thunder forward, but the mix here is slightly off the drumming is relentless as ever and at times I feel the rest of the music is struggling to keep up slightly and when they go back to a slower pace it all works better together.
The Servant suffers no such issues and is a good old fashioned swampy sounding lo-fi old school death metal banger, the guitars sound wonderfully dirty and the drums just keep on pounding and blasting and the vocals just sound perfect here, deep and grunting and absolute class track, The Alchemist carries on in the same vein but has a slower and more menacing vibe throughout, some of the time changes feel a bit off and could do with looking at maybe but non the less still a decent track.
The Offering is a slow burner that may take a few listens to fully appreciate, it’s the most doom influenced song on the album and takes its time to fully get going and when it does, I’m still trying to work out if the beginning and the end of the song actually fit together well enough to be classed as a song?
Diluvian Sentence goes back to the main strong points of the album and it’s a relief because after a couple of slightly underwhelming tracks it really reminds you just how good this album really is and just makes you completely forget anything that might be wrong and just bask in the glory of the anthemic blackened death that s once again gracing your ears another beautifully executed and fantastic sounding track.
And so, All Shall Be Now Itself The Sea is one final chance to take in the gloriousness that this album has offered and a final chance to absolutely nail a track and show you that you 1,000,000% should take it upon yourself to listen to this album because it is probably one of the best death metal records you will hear all year.
I have racked my brain and can only think of one death metal album I have heard that is better than this so far this year, Cult Of Uzura is really that good, it takes all of the best parts of death metal, mixes it with the best parts of black metal and just adds in the best parts of doom for the sake of it and just because they can, sure some parts weren’t as good as I wanted them to be but the standard was set so high a slight mis-step can easily be forgiven as it never took too long for something spectacular to come along and make everything better!
I need to make this perfectly clear so there is no doubt in anyone mind, this record is phenomenal and if you like death metal you should make it your priority to listen to it immediately, even if you don’t just listen to it and it should make you understand just how good death metal can be. I’m saying it now, this should be up there in loads of people’s album of the year lists, it’s that good. 10/10
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