Review Summary: Tasty thrash-death from ’93 with in your face vocals and mid-paced progressive musicianship.
Formed in 1987, from Canada, Obliveon have been discharging some tasty thrash death metal that has evolved throughout the years. On their debut lp
From This Day Forward they created an album with abstract atmosphere and obscurities, whereas with
Nemesis we have more of an upfront assault of riffs and the production is quite different in that, due to the ‘upfrontness’, everything is more clear in sound and is less draining. The production switch doesn’t change the quality of what Obliveon are presenting; rather, it fits the music better. It’s worthy to note that the vocals of Bruno Bernier play a major role into
Nemesis’ sound. He has a tasty mid-range to high range and his voice sits perfectly high in the mix which adds greatly to the feel of this record. In “Dynamo”, which is a varying track ranging from mid-chugs to technical alternate picking, his voice adds quite a bit of filth and grim to the movements which gives the track the needed push to impress the conviction of displacing riffs. The guitar work is clear and concise and doesn’t linger in the same riffing pattern for too long. The compositions aren’t perfect since they can feel like they’re going the motions from time to time and they don’t always feel as aggressive as they should. With this I mean they seem to have a struggle between groove and aggression but they strike the middle ground good enough. “Factory of Delusions” is a fantastic progressive track which has several different feels to it ranging from dissonant solo leads, triplet riff patterns, progressive tremolo builds, and harmonizing quick transitions. While Obliveon may have not created aggressive-pulsating tracks like Pestilence, they do dominate the mid-paced thrash-death style quite well and were among the pioneers of its time. With
Nemesis you’ll be taken back the heart and soul of 1993’s thrash-death movement and should be left with something memorable and special.
