Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Praise the Plague - The Obsidian Gate (2021)

Albums with big openers are usually going in one of two directions, right? Either the full energy and quality of the album is exhausted in the opening track, or it sets the precedent for the rest of the album. In my experience anyway. Germany’s Praise the Plague open their sophomore offering with the vast The Descent. A track that takes time to build its doomy atmosphere before it veers off into more frantic black metal musings. A big and powerful track, The Descent pulls you into the album immediately, surrounding you – no immersing you – in its dense and murky atmosphere from the start. When it ends, the second track instantly takes over and continues this journey superbly. Blackening Swarm II (I can’t see the first one anywhere, so will assume it is on a previous release) picks up right were the opening track left off continuing this solid structure and the immense depth promised from the previous track.

The production job is great giving the album a dynamic sound and one that does not falter when the more dissonant passages arrive at various points of the record. There is a constant sense of power behind the sound no matter which track you listen to and more importantly this album plays well track by track, delivering a cohesive and recognisable sound throughout. Even the eerie, spoken word section in the middle of Great Collapse that gives way to post-metal pickings does not rob the momentum from the album as when the weight comes back into the track it does so with a hair-raising level of success. At over nine minutes, the third track on the album could have easily become a collapse, yet Praise the Plague carry it off superbly.

To be honest, I spent most of The Obsidian Gate waiting for the dip to arrive. The fact is though, even with the instrumental title track pacing things more subtly with its industrial atmospherics at the halfway point of the album, this record has amazing resilience and staying power. Compositionally it is of a consistently high quality and the tracks are arranged superbly. Taking the six tracks in the context of two making up the beginning, two the middle and the other two the end section of the record, The Obsidian Gate is frankly flawless.

What was promised from the start, in terms of a densely intense, atmospheric experience is still evident as the album draws out its final breaths. With the promise of some escape route from closing track The Ascent, the listener will find themselves merely teased by the prospect of this release as they probably will not want to leave and nor do Praise the Plague have any intention of letting them go.