Published: July 14, 2017 

There are times when a band’s musical work is really amazing, but the format they use to express their musicality is truly a great and hard trial for a deeper understanding. One of those strange things that can astonish the fans is the strategy inherited by many Metal genres from Progressive Rock from the 70s: the ability to fill one entire album with only one song. Are you astonished with this? So let the Swedish duet OBITUS lead yo...

Published: May 14, 2017

*Italian version of review can be found here

Another challenge came, another challenge accepted. After going through sleepless nights to tell you about Arkhaeon's "Beyond", here I am, dealing with another single track release. This record comes from the mind of the Swedish black metal band Obitus, a duo composed of Anders Ahlbäck (all instruments) and Johan Huldtgren (vocals), who were helped for the occasion by Fredrik H...

Published: May 3, 2017

Special respect is due to bands who manage to strike a firm balance of the traditional and adventurous sides of black metal. Although recent years have seen a mutual understanding and appreciation between these two ‘schools’, it is less rare to hear a band that goes balls-out with avant-garde technique than to hear one who dares tempt extremity via more restrained means. With Slaves of the Vast Machine, I’m reminded of the straight...

Published: May 1, 2017

The Swedes of Obitus return with their second album full of hatred and spite. ‘Slaves Of The Vast Machine’ is a prime example of industrial black metal done right. Containing only one massive 45 minute song, Obitus hasn’t made it easy for themselves. Luckily, Obitus know a thing or two about song-writing. ‘Slaves Of The Vast Machine’ is a violent journey through hatred, nihilism, totalitarian regimes and dystopian societies. Rel...

Published: April 12, 2017

In formative years all we heard was radio gaga, short songs designed for unchallenging airplay. Of course there was classical music and opera which lasted for several centuries but that was for fossils not for young kids with whole lives ahead of them. Naturally as years piled up exposure to other types of music led to an increase in compositional length, we had prog rock and the dinosaurs that played that could really plod on. Doo...

Published: April 3, 2017 

As a true testament of intensity and brutality, today we Obitus’s latest full-length “Slaves of the Vast Machine”. Comprised of one 45-minute behemoth of a track, this release showcases a master class in crafting intricate Black Metal music that is both engaging and ravaging. While most people would expect this piece to be filled with interludes and atmospheric passages, we are treated to quite the opposite as it is intense ...

Published: March 18, 2017

Obitus have stared down the barrel of dystopian torment for years, feeding omens of oppression to the already oppressed masses. The Swedish post-black metal act revel in the mire of a ruined nation as much as they wallow and have an uncanny way of painting a bleak picture of totalitarian hopelessness… boot plus face plus forever comes to mind. If the future looks like this then get your stomping shoes on… I’m in!

Cold and calcula...

Published: March 6, 2017 

Obitus are a Swedish black metal band and this is their second album.

Playing harsh black metal, Slaves of the Vast Machine consists of one long 45 minute track.

The band’s music is made up of progressive, dissonant and post-black metal, resulting in music that’s chaotic, relentless and brimming with icy hatred. This is the sound of Slaves of the Vast Machine.

There’s an apocalyptic intensity to this, one that would be hard to sust...

Published: February 26, 2017

Obitus has made it pretty clear what you can expect from their latest album, ‘Slaves of the Vast Machine’: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” Capturing an outlook as dour as that and putting it to music may seem like a tall order, but that’s just what Obitus achieves on this 2017 release from Hypnotic Dirge Records.

You’ll find no beauty here. There ...

Published: February 25, 2017

Like the indoctrinating repetition of hypnopaedia or the self-fulfilling prophecies of unchecked Nietzschean philosophy, black metal can, in its own distinct way, hammer home its ideologies through sheer force. The beauty behind such a method is simple, really, and can be conveyed any number of ways but most often is distilled into succinct yet powerful memes: “The object of power is power,” “God is dead,” or “A love o...

Published: February 23, 2017

Obitus is a duo from Gothenburg, and Slaves of the Vast Machine is their second full length album.

Anders and Johan started the band in 2000, but after a demo and contributions to a split, other projects took up most of their time. Material intended for a debut was largely shelved or downright discarded as the band felt they had evolved and grown away from it. Three songs intended for the never completed album with the working title ...

Published: February 16, 2017
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Everyone with the slightest interest in metal (should) know about the Edge Of Sanity epos Crimson. Released in 1995, it’s a 40+ minutes long single death metal song that goes through bouts of fast riffing and groovy drumming, interwoven with harmonic slow passages with clean singing. It’s an amazingly coherent mix of moods that drives the dystopian backstory forward. The sequel, Crimson II, continues the story, but does so in a much...

Published: February 14, 2017

Cries of being part of the machine have been the fodder of rock and roll for decades. For Pink Floyd it was the conformity stamping music industry that prompted their 1975 classic “Welcome to the Machine.” Hell, even Sebastian Bach lamented “I gotta punch the clock that leads the blind / I’m just another gear in the assembly line-oh no” on Skid Row’s 1991 Slave to the Grind. We’ve all felt that wearing down of the rough ...

Published: February 3, 2017

Song previews always strike me as something very odd, since I’m no sure what their purpose is. But when I got a 5 minute preview of this, a 45 minute epic black metal song, now that seems to make sense. I was intrigued, wanted to know more. A few days later my review copy came in, and my God, I was not prepared.

First thing I have to say : this is not for the faint-hearted. It’s a full on assault on all senses, and it’s hard t...

Published: February 5, 2017

Post-black has often struck me as expressing a decadent sort of misery, one which is more malaise than malice, an effeminate whimpering against the dying of the light. It seems to cry out to the God it vehemently denies exists and beg for a purpose, painting a bleak sort of hopelessness; a musical version of an off-brand Sartre, if you will. Like Sartre’s Roquentin1, post-black bands create to find a purpose, but they end up stuck...

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 Ni...

Obitus  are  a  band  from  Sweden  that  plays  a  very  misanthropic  form  of  black  metal  and  this  is  a  review  of  their  2017  album  "Slaves  Of  The  Vast  Machine"  which  will  be  released  in  February  as  a  joint  effort  between  Hypnotic  Dirge  and  Black  Plague  Records.

  A  very  distorted  sound  starts  off  the  album  before  going  into  a  very  fast  and  raw  musical  direction  which  also ...