UMUR The Grotesque Presage is the debut full-length studio album by blackened Canadian death/ thrash metal act Obsydian. The album was released in March 2010 and it´s a self-released affair.

The music on the album is a combination of black, death and thrash metal elements and it´s actually hard to label the music on The Grotesque Presage as more the one style or the other. The vocals are pretty high pitched and very aggressive. At times on the verge of the hysterical. The production is raw and powerful. You´ll get both edgy thrashy riffing, more brutal parts and also loads of melodic content on the album. Death/ thrash acts like Legion of the Damned or Defleshed come to mind when the music is most direct and aggressive, but Obsydian are overall a more ambitious act, which is also obvious when you look at the generally long song lengths on the album. Most songs contain several sections and transitions, guitar solos in spades and Obsydian generally showcase a very adventurous approach to writing music. At times they have a tendency to become a bit too ambitous, when a more simple and direct approach might have suited the songs better, but at least you can´t accuse the band of writing formulaic music. When the band are best, like on album opener Blastocyst Assassination, they simply sandblast my skull with their fierce energy and fortunately there are several other tracks of that quality on the album. There are moments of more mediocre nature here too though, so not all is positive.

The album has been a grower for me, and I feel as if it´s not through growing on me yet. 66:33 minutes of music on a debut album is a bit too much IMO and as I said above, I think the album could have benefitted from a more "to the bone" songwriting approach. On the other hand I admire the adventurous approach on display here and I wouldn´t want Obsydian to be tamed either, so I´m a bit biased. All in all The Grotesque Presage is a really great album that deserves a lot of attention. I guess I´m gonna have to wait until the next release to find out where Obsydian are heading. This is a band I´ll be keeping a very close eye out for. I´m sensing that something big could be on its way. A 3.5 - 4 star rating is deserved.