Album Premiere & Review: Obsidian Sea, Pathos
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on February 3rd, 2022 by JJ Koczan
[Click play above to stream Obsidian Sea’s Pathos in full. Album is out tomorrow on Ripple Music.]
Sofia, Bulgaria, doomers Obsidian Sea release their fourth full-length, Pathos, tomorrow, Feb. 4., on Ripple Music. It is the three-piece’s second offering for the label behind 2019’s Strangers (review here), where 2015’s Dreams. Illusions. Obsessions. (discussed here) was on Serpent Eve and Nuclear War Now!, and their debut, Between Two Deserts, came out in 2012 with the doomly backing of Solitude Productions. If all this backing tells you anything, it should be about the quality of the work the band do and the doom-for-doomers vibe they bring to the forefront of their sound.
Like its predecessors, Pathos, which runs seven songs and just about 40 minutes flat, is a play to genre, but saying that does nothing to account for the lushness of the melodies in “The Long Drowning” or “I Love the Woods,” the understated depth of tones that show up in a track like the centerpiece “Mythos” with its creeper proto-metal midsection, or the dramatic flourish of closer “The Meaning of Shadows.” Opening with “The Death of Wonder,” the trio of guitarist/vocalist Anton Avramov, bassist/backing vocalist Delyan Karaivanov and drummer Bozhidar Parvanov, dare quickly on a bit of classic-style progressive psychedelia, and their effort in doing so pays dividends in the emergent chase of the lead cut’s back half as well as elsewhere, in the solo-heavy “Sisters” for example, or the organic, understated finish of the aforementioned “I Love the Woods.”
They are not excruciatingly slow, by any means, but neither do Obsidian Sea rush, instead seeming to let each piece find both its own path and its place within the fluid scope of the album in its entirety. It is a performance-based record in that the focus of the listener is moved to what the band themselves are doing at any given time, but that does not mean Pathos is void of atmosphere either; it just happens to be that the atmosphere cast by the songs is natural enough to remind that there are people here making the music. In “The Long Drowning” after “Lament the Death of Wonder” launches with some tension at the outset, there’s a subtle angularity to the riffing, but this is obviously a band who are aware of the traditionalism they’re working toward.
There’s more king-and-castle about their sound than emotional downerism, but “The Long Drowning” is still doom at its core, and though some might liken it to more commercial fare like Ghost because of its midtempo chug and near-goth melody, the same holds true of “Sisters,” which follows. Obsidian Sea have kept the harder edge that typified their output beginning a decade ago and have showcased their growth in kind, bolstering lyrical declarations in the Sabbath-swing-with-NWOBHM-poise “Mythos,” which has a speedier tempo until it doesn’t, the guitar leading that transition as it seems to call the shots most of the way through.
To wit, five of the seven inclusions — the exceptions are “Lament the Death of Wonder” and “The Revenants” — end with a guitar solo. “I Love the Woods” is about half there, turning back for a last measure through its downtrodden central progression, and the solo is part of a big, cymbal-wash finish in “The Meaning of Shadows,” but I’d argue that in context that counts too. This coincides with the songs being almost entirely of similar length between about 5:20 and 6:30 minutes long, but much to its credit, Pathos doesn’t come across as samey.
“The Long Drowning” gallops and careens in its back half — Karaivanov‘s bassline no less a highlight than any of the shred laid on top of it — while “Mythos” flips that around, quicker in its first half, more hook-based and languid amid the extra layers of strum near its conclusion. Likewise, “I Love the Woods” turns to a different kind of storytelling lyrically, and especially when taken as the first part of the closing duo with “The Meaning of Shadows,” it transitions between the more outwardly doomed feel of “The Revenants” and the more classically progressive “The Meaning of Shadows,” which seems at first a subdued note on which to wrap the album, but gradually builds to its more intense finish, a current of what might be organ or other keys running alongside the guitar, bass and drums — there’s a hum there, and vocal layers sweep in to complement at around 5:08 — and sticking around for the culmination that follows in about the last 30 seconds of the song, a relatively quick end but very definitively the end.
Something one might experience standing in front of a stage at any number of festivals the world over with a stake in proclamations of “true”-ness. Obsidian Sea fit as much with that sense of aesthetic as they subtly work to defy it throughout Pathos, but the seven songs are perhaps most surprising in their unhurriedness. It’s not just that they’re playing slow — they’re not, at least compared to some; compared to others they definitely are; welcome to the subjective universe — but that they hold to such a methodical feel and each procession is executed with such a purposeful feel that it’s that much easier to be moved along with it.
And whether that’s the more bounce-happy first couple minutes of “Mythos” or the melancholy, heavy blues-style duggery of the verse in “The Long Drowning,” Obsidian Sea don’t leave anything to question as to their intent throughout the songs, and while they’re speaking most to an audience who perhaps already knows where they’re coming from — that is, one who’ll hear the rolling crash after two minutes into “The Revenants” and nod along accordingly — the unity of the material stems from the production, which isn’t flat, but refuses to be overblown.
I won’t say a bad word about letting fly and seeing what happens, and certainly there are moments of that as well throughout Avramov‘s shred-prone stretches, but it is the restraint inherent in how the material is crafted, and how much it comes across as crafted, that gives Pathos is feel of mastery. A decade after their debut, one wouldn’t expect any less from Obsidian Sea, but even with that consideration, their songwriting has never reached further or come through with such cohesion. They’d already figured out who they want to be as a band. This is them refining their own definition of what they do.
