Review Summary: A forceless and flaccid effort from a band capable of much better, A Sonication falters with a lack of hooks, finesse and originality.
After their renewed fortunes with the melodic A Valediction in 2021, Obscura experienced the not-unfamiliar problem of a series of lineup changes. Two rotations of members later, A Sonication comes out, and clearly Steffan Kummerer was trying to make lightning strike twice with a similarly "melodeath" iteration of Obscura's sound. Setting aside the circumstances of this album (riff-plagiarism and a rushed recording schedule), which you can read of elsewhere, something somewhere clearly went very wrong with the actual music.
Where A Valediction was fast paced and propped up by the dazzling lead work of Christian Muenzer, A Sonication sounds practically bogged down even whilst drummer James Stewart is hammering away with fast blast beats and great technical precision. The bass performance is quite good as well, perhaps not as good as the usual Obscura standard, but above average for a death metal band, with good clarity and some neat lines. The problem is almost entirely the rhythm guitar work: Kummerer has in the past shown decent skill as a rhythm player and clearly knew his way round a riff, but here the guitars sound far too loosely played and imprecise. The riffs are not a quick and dynamic, simply cycling through chord tones in a monotonous, boring way, as if an AI was trained on every Obscura song and instructed to make the riffs as generic as possible. Take
In Solitude: on the face of it, it recalls their Cosmogenesis-era, but it just rattles off a drab riff and repetitive basic blast beat that makes it sound like they inserted a placeholder part for the verse and forgot to change it later on. Kummerer's guitar leads are also quite sloppy, lacking the same precision (or possibly just quality editing) that they held on previous efforts.
Speaking of which, A Sonication has disastrously poor production. You'd be forgiven for thinking this was arranged and mixed by a bedroom producer, but unbelievably, this album is produced by THE Fredrik Nordström, responsible for great sounding albums like Clayman, A Predator's Potrait, and many others. Mushy, lifeless guitars, a bizarre absence of any low end, and washed-out leads dampen the impact of any part of this album and sap away the force that this album is desperately banking on in the absence of the same creative riffs and jazzy solos of previous efforts. I can only presume Nordstrom was watching the Bourne trilogy in the back whilst Kummerer did all the mixing.
The most painful thing about A Sonication is that there are brief glimpses of their formula working.
Evenfall's opening bass riff (plagiarised from prior bassist Alex Weber, predictably) establishes a poignant atmosphere, and the emphasis on a slower, more melodic approach helps bring out some of the best riff writing on the album.
Stardust, despite feeling like a slow-motion version of an Akroasis or Diluvium track, sees them actually find some interesting riffs, although the formulaic structure unfortunately kills their momentum by the chorus and the song does not progress far from its initial chord progression. The other guitarist, Kevin Olasz, also provides several good solos, with a cool "outside" sound and more interesting harmonic choices than in the rest of the guitar work. However, it feels that the good ideas are swamped in predictable chord progressions, basic choruses, and unmoving song structures.
Who's to say if this particular iteration of Obscura will last, but if it does, their next album needs a lot more time to cook. A shallow and dull effort from a band capable of much better, A Sonication is the worst Obscura album and a bad omen for their future as one of the leading lights of tech-death.
