Obsequiae

Last year, 20 Buck Spin released the first vinyl edition of Obsequiae’s masterfully unique 2011 debut album Suspended in the Brume of Eos. Perhaps the only band that might fit as well on a label like Harmonia Mundi as on 20 Buck Spin, Obsequiae reemerges with Aria of Vernal Tombs, having painstakingly shaped their second opus over four years in the way an expert woodworker plies her trade to craft singular works of exquisite beauty.

As before, traditional Medieval source material, this time interpreted via Vicente La Camero Marino’s sparse, sorrowful harp pieces, appears throughout Aria, providing a foundation upon which to build the longer, metal-based sagas forming the album’s core. Black metal, death metal, traditional heavy metal and Medieval music are all weaved seamlessly together in baroque yet abrasive reverence on Aria, resulting in a remarkably original long-player. With a wet clarity to the incandescent production that cites underrated obscurities like Sacramentum’s Far Away from the Sun and Eucharist’s A Velvet Creation along with the early works of Varathron, Samael and Rotting Christ, the atmosphere on Aria of Vernal Tombs brings to 2015 what such bands strangely but sincerely captured years ago.