Band: EXPERIOR OBSCURA
Country: Italy
Title: Iter in Nebula
Label: Third-I-Rex
Year: 2019
Style: Black Metal
Review:
Curious enough this debut album from Experior Obscura was composed and recorded in 2013 and released by the band as a demo in 2015, and now re-released as debut album by Third-I-Rex. Probably the first time it was a digital release and only a few friends of the band had the chace to check it out, so they decided to give it more exposure this way while remstering and revisiting the whole thing. Experior Obscura seems to be essentially a one man band by Nefastus who's also involved in some other bands like Malvento or Mephisto, but this album also features a drummer by the name of R who's probably a guest, but it might as well be a full-time member of the band, too. The album is split in 3 parts, each of them split on their end into 2 or 3 different track making it a 7 tracks album clocking an hour of playing time. Although we're swimming in aggressive and straight-forward Black Metal waters here we get a wide palette of rhythms ranging from slow and rotten to fast and demented making this album an interested journey, but the real highlight are Nefastus' vocals: tortured cries meet desperate screams and horrifying moans with parts where multiple layers of vocals are thrown in one above the other, offering a quite expressive atmospere of anger and despair (Mayhem comes to mind most of the time). The compositions are ranging from melancholic parts to fast and aggressive passages influenced by the first wave of Thrash Black Metal bands. All in all we're getting a lot of feelings and soundscapes on this album for it to pass unobserved, and after the audition I'm not sure if I should recommend this more to fans of melancholic and depressive Black Metal or to followers of raw, thrashy, devastating type of Black Metal, so I'll just go ahead and suggest it to all. Released in form of a gatefold digipak with lyrics printed inside (although to be honest I found the lyrics to be quite dull...).
Reviewed by Adrian
Rating: 8/10