July 2021 Feature Release – The Fallen Edition
So just like that we find that a new month is upon us which of course means that we’ll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we’re asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. We’re really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on our chosen releases so don’t be shy.
This month’s feature release for The Fallen has been nominated by Sonny92. It's last year's "Obliviosus" debut album from Oregon-based doom metal exponents M.S.W. which Sonny has been raving about for some time now. I'm subsequently anticipating something pretty special here.
https://metal.academy/releases/21680
I was originally going to propose Hell's 2012 album III but thought it might be a bit much for some, so instead I went with his 2020 album released under his own name (well, initials), the superb and not quite as abrasive, Obliviosus. As Daniel rightly says, I have been raving about this guy for ages, both with this album and his Hell releases. Nobody does bleak and desolate better in my book, but Obliviosus is one of those very few albums that, for me personally, transcends the music and connects on a deeper level in the same way that Warning's Watching From A Distance or Shining's V-Halmstad do.
The album is a very personal album to MSW, hence it's release under his own name, in that it's subject matter concerns his brother RAW's crippling drug addiction and the fraternal love he feels for his sibling, countered by his anger and frustration at the damaging effect his addiction had on the brothers' close family. As MSW says in the opener, O Brother, "I will never forget you, I will never forgive you" and this dichotomy is at the heart of what makes this album tick.
That opener is a real gut-wrencher, the music ebbs and flows and threatens to wash the listener away in a tide of emotion. Female clean vocals and Bell Witch-style strumming are swept away by black metal blasting, angst-ridden harsh singing and Hell's trademark sludge/doom riffs. This is followed by a short piano piece entitled Funus, which is apparently Czech for funeral and refers to a metaphorical funeral rather than an actual one, I feel, as the addict is lost to the family, possibly for ever.
Both the remaining track, Humanity and twenty-minute closer Obliviosus dive deeper into the emotional turmoil of living with an addict in the family, extreme doom and atmospheric sludge metal berate the bringer of this curse and vie with cleaner, emotionally-charged melancholic musings upon life, death and the suffering of death in life.
I really cannot state strongly enough how highly I rate this album. Once I start on a listening trip with it, I find it hard to stop and can find myself playing little else for days at a time, most other music seeming puerile and insignificant in comparison. Maybe that's MSW's genius - perhaps the music itself has become the drug against which he rails.
If I could only ever listen to one album ever again, it would very probably be this one.
First of all: Sonny, you're remarkable run of selecting top tier doom metal albums is in peak form with Obliviosus as the featured release for this month. This record sounds breathtaking with its control of atmosphere and dynamics throughout the tracks. The mixing on this record is splendid as the bass lines are given ample amounts of space to breathe behind those pummeling guitars. The vocals are very interesting as they alternate between monochromatic chants and the unfiltered screams of the lead vocalist. Even being fully aware that this would be the case, I was still thrown off guard by how the spacing out of these hellacious moments contribute to the darkest moments of this conceptual record.
My favourite track on this album is "Humanity" in the way MSW works through a very simple melodic passage and transforms it into something that is still recognizable, but so distorted and far removed from the texture that was presented near the start. The closing title track shows patience and uses its full twenty minute runtime to change from soft, introspective post-rock, into a fit of rage that is complimented by slow blast beats in the percussion that is reminiscent of atmospheric black metal rather than doom, including shredded vocals. And then ending with an extended feedback loop as the album wains its way to an eerie conclusion.
Where this track does fall off the rails for me is the lack of focus contextually. Extended songs are hard sells in doom metal, since thematic development is sparse. What MSW does is brings together four/five different ideas that play out for a few minutes, then move to the next without much in the way of preparation. Each section is well documented by a return to the original post-rock instrumentation, so why not trim it down to two/three themes that could be meshed together? Furthermore, I don't think the atmo-black adjacent moments on "O Brother" work either; maybe it's a sound that could have been left alone.
With all of that being said, I still do like the closing track, and this album by design. The sound of this record is gorgeous, which helps to exemplify the heartbreaking reality of MSW's position; letting someone go (physically or otherwise) because of addiction. It's a bleak listen, and the long song structures only help elaborate the painstaking reality of it all. Very good stuff!
8/10
"Obliviosus" is a wonderful release Sonny. A truly captivating piece of art that gains further emotional investment with each repeat listen. I honestly don't think the Doom Metal tag does it justice because it's so much more than that with each track taking a different direction. The opening track "O Brother" is the best of the four in my opinion, perhaps because it's the most extreme with M.S.W. taking more of a blackened doom/sludge direction & in doing so managing to get my blood boiling nicely. The short ambient piece "Funus" is a well executed instrumental interlude that would fit very nicely on a Stars Of The Lid record (in fact I'd be very surprised if they weren't the direct influence for this one). "Humanity" sits very much in line with the stripped back post-sludge sound that Neurosis championed on their "The Eye Of Every Storm" album while epic closer "Obliviosus" is a post-metal monster that draws heavily on post-rock superstars Sigur Rós for inspiration.
In truth, there's not a huge amount of your conventional doom metal sound here with a lot more of the album sitting more comfortably under the post-metal tag & incorporating clean instrumentation, string arrangements & soaring melodic guitar overlays however whenever M.S.W. gets his doom on he leaves you crushed under the weight of a thousand anvils with the screechy vocals pushing things into sludge territory. The guitar & bass tone are wonderfully filthy whilst always remaining clear & concise. The links to black metal are fairly tenuous to be honest. Sure, the vocals kinda sit somewhere between a black metal shriek & an angst-ridden sludge metal scream & there are a couple of two minute sections where the drumming kicks into a more up-tempo blasty style that sees you temporarily transported to an icy Scandinavian winter however there's not nearly enough genuine black metal to warrant any considerations of blackened doom as a primary subgenre. In fact, I'm more inclined to go with the post-sludge tag as the most senior subgenre for this one & will certainly be looking to add a Hall entry to have it included in The Infinite.
"Obliviosus" is an introspective & emotional rollercoaster of a record. It's as beautiful & uplifting as it is dark & depressing with the glistening post-metal component playing the perfect foil for the dank & doomy sludge metal one. The ambitious instrumentation has been splendidly executed & I have to wonder how much of a solo act this really was given the sheer scope of the arrangements. The vocals do a great job at conveying the heart-wrenching subject matter too & you don't have any trouble picking up on the storyline despite the lack of cleanliness in their delivery. This element also helps to pull the variety of styles & sounds into a more cohesive unit than they might otherwise have appeared. It's releases like this one that have been one of the real positives of the Metal Academy feature release concept & keep me looking forward to connecting with all of you well-informed metalheads as often as possible to share our passions.
For fans of Hell, Lento & Dark Buddha Rising.
4.5/5
P.S. Am I the only one that's baffled by Metal Archives having labelled M.S.W. as funeral doom metal? I've always been baffled by many metalheads' insistence on using that site as a reliable point of reference when making arguments on metal-related topics.
MSW / Hell may incorporate a number of genres but Funeral Doom certainly ain't one of them. I think metal archives are a bit lazy when it comes to genre tagging to be honest.
If I am honest this release did at first have me more than a little torn. It is not that I do not enjoy Obliviosus, more that it takes such a monumental amount of effort to even begin to digest it that I do find myself somewhat fatigued by it after each listen. This draining effect I can put down to two factors. Number one, it is so emotionally wrought that you cannot fail to be engaged by the sorrow in this tragedy-soaked release. Secondly, it is such a vast record in terms of its influences that you do find the very fabric of its existence to be a much more detailed tapestry than the tags that get put against the release initially suggest.
Were an alien to land tomorrow and I played them his release I would probably describe it to them as follows. An album written on the scale of an atmospheric black metal album with a cacophony of sludge/post-sludge influences all over it, interspersed with some clear funeral doom (a la Bell Witch) in places – especially the opening track. I am not one usually too hot on the concept of genres/sub-genres but to describe this album without referencing thus would be a travesty.
Now, my individual take on this album (knowing its subject matter) is that the turgid nature of the tracks is a perfect representation of the artists personal battle with grief. Never having gone through a tragedy of the nature of what is described here I may well be quite far off the mark here; however, I do pick up a distinct sense of each track representing a differing stage of grief. Opening track O Brother is an angry yet confused sounding affair that cries out the soul of a person coming to terms with a loss they cannot quite process. In the complexity of this period of trying to process the situation anger takes the driving seat and what you get is a very personal insight into the human psyche during one of life’s true tests of a person’s resilience.
Second track Funus, sounds like a reversal of the opening statement and comes across as the artist trying to seek the positives from the life that is lost or to simply dwell (albeit temporarily) in a positive space. Assuming this to be a (Latin?) translation meaning funeral, the track feels like an attempt to give someone who has caused such obvious disruption to your life the best possible send-off still.
By the time track three rolls around we are back to the unenviable task of trying to process again, only this time the anger gives way to a more desolate and hopeless sound, like the inevitability of the situation simply cannot be challenged. This is one of the more draining tracks here. As an individual track it just comes across as so lost and bereft of hope it sticks with me perhaps more than its astray structure suggests it should do when balanced in the sum of all parts.
The final track here is probably one of the best closing tracks I have heard in a long time. It carries through the lost direction of the previous track initially but then slowly consolidates the emotion and energy back into the angry space the album began in, only this time taking that anger even further and giving it focus to what is a perfect culmination to the record. It incorporates so many elements during the opening ten minutes that it sounds like all the conflicting emotions and fathomless darkness are being positioned finally and to some degree accepted.
The reference to Neurosis that Daniel makes is perhaps the nearest comparator for the whole release I can think of. Whilst not identifiable as such consistently in the sound, the elements of Neurosis are present in the heart and soul that has been put into the record in terms of the writing and the delivery of this very personal and draining release.
5/5