What do you say to the New Noise team giving you something to stimulate your mind while you titillate your earholes today? What’s that? No thank you?!? You’d rather stay an ignoramus! Well, too freakin’ bad! You’re about to learn yourself a thing or two, whether you like it or not!
Today’s lesson is an international one and comes courtesy of Venice, Italy’s Obscura Qalma. The band formed in 2018, releasing their debut EP From the Sheol to the Apeiron a year later, and unleashing their debut LP Apotheosis this past November.
Now, what makes Obscura Qalma so sophisticated? Well, I’m glad you asked! One of the sources of their well-earned pretense is the fact that they’re a symphonic death metal band. Usually, the gothic grandeur of metal crossing swords with the drawn bow of a string orchestra is achieved through some pairing of palled horror and black metal with a local philharmonic, but Obscura Qalma is bringing these lofty sonic maneuvers down to the level of roots and soil, and bequeathing enlightenment to the most wretched and unmentionable the human race has to offer in the process.
And this brings us to the second aspect of their sound that just might jumpstart the dormant disc drive of your galaxy brain—their music is rooted in concepts of continental existentialism and psychoanalysis. The title of their album Apotheosis (meaning “To Deify”) is a reflection of the dialectical nature of their sound and lyrics, referencing the highest order of development and godlike achievements of the human mind, while the band burrow and toil in a furrow of ash and soot, performing inscrutable rights and intoning esoteric incantations under the sap-colored gaze of a bewitching crescent moon.
There is a strange will to power in their Promethean dirges as if they are forging a new path for humanity through a bottleneck of forced regression, uncovering what was hidden in the depths of the psyche while building a kingdom for themselves in the dirty and hollows of our present civilization.
Modernity has robbed us of our illusions and the heroes of old, and with no gods, fathers, or masters left to kill, we are left to inherit only their empty coffins. Obscura Qalma have taken it upon themselves to learn to fill the shapes of these empty vessels in order to become the magistrates of a new a better age. Oh yeah, and the guitar work on Apotheosis is super fucking sick.
Buy and stream Apotheosis via Bandcamp below:
Apotheosis is out via Rising Nemesis Records.
