Germany’s Obscura needs no introduction. They have resided near or atop the tech death heap since 2009’s Cosmogenesis. For me, they peaked with 2016s Akroasis, but all of their albums have been excellent, including their last effort, 2021s A Valediction, which saw former members Christian Munzer (ex-Necrophagist, ex-Spawn of Possession) and fretless bassist Jeroen Paul Thessling return to the band. And the result, while still definitely Obscura,  had an even more melodic death metal, At The Gates-ish vibe that the band started with 2018s Diluvium, and it worked superbly.

However, Munzer, Thessling, and drummer David Diepold have not stuck around for the follow-up, replaced respectively by Kevin Olasz on Guitars, Robin Zielhorst on bass, and James Stewart on drums.  So the ‘supergroup’ moniker that applied to some prior albums and A Valediction is certainly less relevant here. Even though the new players have considerable experience in other bands, the star power is gone, it’s back to the Steffen Kummerer show and it shows.

After dabbling in more of a melo-death sound on the prior album, that dabbling has been even more realized on A Sonication, as the album sounds like something In Flames might have kicked out in the Whoracle, Colony and Reroute to Remain era. So take that as you will. Just listen to the second song “Evenfall”, the instrumental number “Beyond the Seventh Sun”,  “Stardust” (with spacey- robotic vocals), or the Hypocrisy vibe of “The Sun Eater”  and the closing title track show. It is well-played, clean, well produced, sci-fi based melodic death metal.

There are still small remnants of the band’s blistering tech death past here and there mixed in with the melodic death metal lean from the previous album, with a few fretless twangs thrown in, as parts of opener “Silver Linings”, “In Solitude”, surprisingly savage (and short) “The Prolonging” and “The Sun Eater” show. But still, they are waaaaay more pure melodic death metal than tech death (and let’s be honest, Kummerer’s vocals have always sounded more like melo-death vocals)..  And when you compare these songs and this sound to the likes of say… “Anticosmic Overload” from Cosmogenesis, there is no comparison even though Kummerer still delivers sumptuous leads at every turn.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a bad album. It’s an OK to good album. But it’s an OK to good melodic death metal album, not a tech death album. I’m sure I’m in the minority on this one, but in my humble opinion, this is Obscura’s weakest work of their career, as they are simply a decent 90s-00s sounding melodic death metal band now rather than the kings of German technical death metal. That title looks to be going to Retromorphosis.

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