Richard G.: When you count adventurous bands such as Arcturus, Solefald or the Russian outfit Rakoth amongst your favourite black metal bands, then you should definitely keep an eye out for the pioneering duo of Oblomov. These Czechs (and a couple of friends) have just released a pretty interesting proposition called ‘Communitas’, which showcases an experimental approach right along the lines of the bands mentioned.
The lyrical concept of the album revolves around the human psyche and the so called ‘liminal state’: a period in which the boundaries of your personality are stretched allowing you to possibly acquire new perspectives on things. This abstract idea makes perfect sense as a topic once you’ve heard the material on ‘Communitas’. The compositions absolutely contain recognizable, shredding and sharp black metal passages, but they sound far from conventional thanks to the stylistically quite deviant parts. A large portion of the weird sounds originates from keyboards and sampler (such as several woodwinds and electronic sounds), the rest is simply produced by the mouth harp, didgeridoo, a saxophone or just strange vocals (such as the ones by guest vocalist Björnar E. Nilsen from Vulture Industries). Most of the time these sonic experiments sound quite ok, there’s just a few intermezzo’s in which Oblomov stray away from metal a tad too far. Another downside is the thin production, which gives the keyboards especially a rather unflattering casio-quality. This makes that at this point Oblomov’s ideas do not get the treatment they deserve and that is quite a shame.
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