Review Summary: Hooky, easy-listening tech/progressive death metal for the whole family. Iconic proves dazzling, but stops short of fully embracing a more intense or experimental sound.
I found myself revisiting Iconic following the catastrophically poor A Sonication from their "parent" band,
Obscura. From most accounts, the majority of the good ideas on Obscura's mid-era albums, Akroasis and Diluvium, came from the band members who jumped ship and formed Obsidious. With the returning lineup with Muenzer and Thessling also having jumped ship ahead of their most recent effort, and with other former members having found their music plagiarised in the final product, just about everything that could be wrong with a tech death album was wrong with that album. I was tempted to write a full review but it takes immense willpower to listen past the first few songs due to how boring and generic it all is. Suffice to say, I was curious to see how Obsidious would fair in comparison, with a similar style and many of the same members.
Trujillo, Lanser and Klausenitzer were already clearly very talented musicians in Obscura, but with Obsidious they seem to have a bit more freedom to play in their own distinct styles. The music is certainly very busy at times, such as on the title track or the opener
Under Black Skies, but Lanser in particular gets to excel with slower, more purposeful drum parts that tidily fit within the slower cuts like
I Am and
Sense of Lust. Trujillo undoubtedly is the star of the show, now untethered by having to write for other guitar players and as a result produces mind-bogglingly technical riffs and lead lines. Klausenitzer does not make a massive impression in comparison to the other two, but his style gives the guitars a lot of space to lead the charge, and his fretless lines sneak in embellishments at the right times to keep the sound tasteful and fun.
The only non-Obscura alumni here is the vocalist Javi Perera, whose performance gives Iconic an edge with his dramatic shifts from harsh to cleans and wide range. His melodic roar and the synth heavy backdrop of much of the music helps lend a theatrical quality, akin to Deconstruction by Devin Townsend Project or Ihsahn. His cleans are
solid - he has a slightly whiny quality, but generally he trends away from the bland softer cleans typical of many modern tech death bands. His harsh vocals are great, however, and help propel the more chorus-oriented songwriting on tracks like
I Am and
Sense of Lust.
Iconic is probably one of the easiest listening tech death albums out there, thanks to there being a wealth of hooks and very distinct song structures and tempos. No matter what, there is a constant of tasteful, jazzy lines, so even during meatheaded songs or the thrashier tracks like
Nowhere, the experience feels very focused and tight, with very few dull moments. The transitions, often the bane of many a progressive band, are all tidy and help to avoid a "riff-salad" feeling that a lesser band would suffer. No matter how blazing fast or vocally-oriented it gets, there is a pervasive "epic" atmosphere.
With the more proggy back half of the album, there is a feeling that there could have been a bigger "push" on some of the more melodic tracks to further develop those ideas.
Devotion leans towards a very melodic melodeath vocal break, but reverts to its more straightforward chorus a little too soon, as if the band is afraid to fully embrace a more experimental extended break. This slightly rigid structure on some tracks does hold Iconic back from being a truly excellent tech/progressive death metal album, but its unusually hooky choruses and dazzling instrumentation will no doubt give a fan of modern tech death a lot to savour.
