OBSIDIAN SEA are pretty much the only band around that we could possibly name “doom purists“. These rather pedantic and sophisticated chaps could very well hail from Coventryt (or Pesaro, Italy, for that matter) but are actually part of the slowly but steadily growing stoner/doom scene in Sofia.
Their debut ‘Between Two Deserts’ was just the right way to kick off their career, the following concerts were getting better and better, so that now we can finally feats our ears on the result of all these developments – their second release ‘Dreams. Illusions. Obsessions.’ An album at lest as important for the local scene as Upyr, Mental Architects and Voyvoda’s latest offerings.
Of course, OBSIDIAN SEA sound nothing like those bands, being much more akin to the masters of olden doom Cathedral, Saint Vitus and even Reverend Bizarre. If you’re really, really into obscure European bands (OBSIDIAN SEA surely are), you might catch the influence of their favourite Italian rock/metal acts Paul Chain, Death SS and Black Hole.
And just like any good doom purists, OBSIDIAN SEA are brooding, slow, introspective and melancholic in the best British tradition. They stay so true to the genre’s unwritten rules that some might call them monotonous but we know better and see this to be the inetended effect.
The album tracks are just 6 with none of them falling short of the 6-minute mark, all of them developing around a single slow riff or bass lineq always staying neatly true to the style aestetics , never for a second being boring.
What’s more, after some twenty spins of tracks like ‘Mulkurul’ and ‘Confession’, we still haven’t completely explored their mirky depths which only comes to show that OBSIDIAN SEA are quite the opposite of boring – they create multilayered, deeply philosophical and somewhat occult music that somehow combines the traditional and the progressive.