The Swedish duo Obitus (vocalist/lyricist Johan Huldtgren and multi-instrumentalist/composer Anders Ahlbäck) are not prolific, but when they do release new music, it’s worth close attention. Their debut album March of The Drones (reviewed here) was released in 2009, and all we’ve received from Obitus since then was the excellent single (“Panoticotopia”) they recorded for the Elemental Nightmares series of splits in 2014. But now they have a new album on the way.

Like March of the Drones, Slaves of the Vast Machine will be a single album-length song, this one 45 minutes in length. It will be co-released by Black Plague Records and Hypnotic Dirge Records on February 16. Recently a five-minute excerpt from this mammoth track was released for listening via Bandcamp.

For a mere excerpt, it’s incredibly potent. The dismal, dissonant melody generates a deeply dark and dire atmosphere, while at the same time the huge rhythms hammer your head with tremendous power. And that’s just a prelude to an explosion of blasting drums, blazing riffs, and caustic rasps that will mow you down like a blast front.

Very heavy, very intense, very dark music that should make you (as it does me) super-anxious to hear the rest of this monolithic creation."