Wino Wednesday: The Obsessed, “Forever Midnight” from 1982 Demo
I’m kind of surprised that a band hasn’t come along that sounds like this yet. Don’t get me wrong, plenty of doom bands sound like The Obsessed (half the state of Maryland walks by and waves). But I mean exactly like this, the way that vintage ’70s production styles have taken such hold of heavy rock and doom these last several years. Moving into the murky, more obscure ’80s style of doom — when it buried itself underground to escape the blast radius of New Wave and glam much like the rodentia that survived the collision that killed the dinosaurs — would seem the next logical stage in that progression, wouldn’t it? And there’s a definite style at work in The Obsessed‘s earliest demos and others from that era that through whatever studio magic or lack thereof could feasibly be translated to a modern recording. I guess to some degree that’s what Revelation/Against Nature have been doing on their last couple outings, but seems to me there’s room for more than just one band in that terrain, at least if the glut of ’70s worshipers is anything to go by.
The track “Forever Midnight” would show up again on The Obsessed‘s self-titled debut, released in 1990 by Hellhound Records, but as the demo shows, it predates the album by at least eight years. Of course, The Obsessed formed as Warhorse in 1976, and we’ve seen that band rocking out Led Zeppelin covers at high school in Rockville, Maryland, so “Forever Midnight” could feasibly go back even further than ’82, but I wouldn’t know how much. Even in the rough demo form, it’s a solid groover. Not much of an ending, really — it just kind of stops — but as an early showing of Wino‘s riffing style, it comes across as a feeling-out process for what later on became The Obsessed‘s ultra-straightforward, no frills doom metal. Structurally, the demo is just about the same as the finished version as well, so you can figure that Wino knew what he was going for at the time and was pleased with the results even eight years after the fact when the self-titled came out. Hard to argue.
Enjoy and have a great Wino Wednesday:
