UMUR "Ovations to Death" is the first demo by Swedish thrash/proto-death metal act Obscurity. The cassette tape demo was independently released in December 1986. Obscurity formed in 1985 and released the "Ovations to Death" demo and the "Damnations Pride" (December 1987) demo before disbanding in 1988. They shortly reunited in 1992 and released a two-song demo, but they soon split-up again. The material from the three demos were compiled and released on the 1998 "Damnations Pride" compilation album (Scarlet Records). While it may seem Obscurity didn´t make much impact in their original run, because they were never signed and never released a full-length studio album, they actually had quite the impact on the Swedish underground extreme metal scene along with artists like Bathory, Mefisto, and Merciless, and they are often cited as a great influence on the Swedish death metal explosion of the late 80s/early 90s.

Stylistically the material on "Ovations to Death" is not death metal though, but instead a very aggressive, relentlessly fast-paced (although a few mid-paced heavy parts can be found here too), and raw sounding thrash metal style, which owes a lot to the savagery of the early releases by the German triumvirate of Kreator, Sodom, and Destruction (and to American artists like Possessed, Dark Angel, and Morbid Saint). It´s such a raw and intense release, that at times it borders sounding unhinged, but Obscurity are relatively well playing and they perform their parts with decent precision and manage to keep things pretty tight.

"Ovations to Death" is raw sounding, but for a demo release from 1986, it sounds pretty good to my ears. The drums are a bit too low and often drown in the mix, but the guitars, bass, and vocals are all audible and you can hear all details. You won´t be surprised by the music style, and you won´t find much here you haven´t heard before on releases by the above mentioned artists, but this is still a pretty extreme release for the time and especially for the Swedish scene, which wasn´t producing that many extreme metal releases in the mid-80s. It´s definitely worth a listen and also serves as a valid historical documentation of the early extreme metal scene in Sweden, which a couple of years down the line would become one of the most influential death metal scenes in the world. A 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.