PannionSeer
I wasn't ready for this album, but it burst into my life through a brick wall like the Kool-Aid man on methamphetamines and beat the living daylights out of me just for the hell of it. As others have mentioned, this is an unrelenting and vicious slab of chaotic blackened death metal that levels everything in its path, takes no prisoners, and is not for the weak of heart. If there is a Guinness Book of World Record entry for metal, then the drummer of this band should be included.
Ippocalyptica
I have gone back and forth in my mind on how I should categorise this album, and though I might be taking this sentiment too far, I have settled on the following: before there was the stunning Standalone Complex band known as Unknown Artist and its devastating debut album, A Pig’s Head On A Stick, there was Slaves of the Vast Machine by Obitus. I can offer no higher praise, nor can I muster a better comparator. This is absolutely devastating and eschatological black metal.
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T-Shirt/Apparel + Digital Album
New Obitus T-Shirt for the "Slaves of the Vast Machine" album!
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Update: Nov 2018 - Only medium and large shirts remain
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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
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"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever."
A vision of our future dystopia is presented on 'Slaves of the Vast Machine", the new album from the Swedish Misanthropic Black Metal duo 'Obitus'. After their 2009 full-length "March of the Drones" and an EP in 2014 , they return with their most solid album yet!
'Slaves of the Vast Machine' conveys human aimlessness and desperation amidst total social control with some brilliant icy riffs and dissonant tones. This is harsh progressive post-Black Metal that is relentless and chaotic from start to finish with some really solid tremolo-picking melodies, inexorable atmosphere, and a complete disregard for humanity.
This work is a single 45 minute track, a monolith without pause and as relentless as totalitarianism.
Co-released by Black Plague Records and Hypnotic Dirge Records on February 16, 2017.
Une vision de notre avenir dystopique est présenté à travers ‘Slaves of the Vast Machine’, le nouvel album du duo black metal misanthropique suédois ‘Obitus’. Après leur album ‘March of the Drones’ sorti en 2009 et un EP en 2014, ils sont de retour avec leur album le plus solide à ce jour!
‘Slaves of the Vast Machine’ exprime la désorientation humaine et le désespoir d’un contrôle social absolu à travers des airs froids et des sonorités dissonantes. Il s’agit ici d’un post-black metal à la fois brut et progressif, une suite d’idées qui déboulent et s’entremêlent du début à la fin avec d’impressionnantes mélodies de tremolo picking, une atmosphère inexorable, de même qu’une indifférence complète envers l’humanité.
Cet opus est composé d’une seule pièce de 45 minutes, un monolithe incessant aussi impitoyable que le totalitarisme.
Une collaboration de Black Plague Records et Hypnotic Dirge Records, à paraître sur les deux labels le 16 février 2017.
credits
released February 16, 2017
Anders Ahlbäck - All Music & Instruments
Johan Huldtgren - All Lyrics & Vocals
Obitus carry the listener along for 45 minutes through the sheer staggering force of their intensity, though that intensity takes different shapes. To be sure, the music does ebb and flow, but there is no real breathing room, no comfort, no release from the tension, no beauty in this very dark and dystopian nightmare.
You could think of the music as either an expression of the hate and destructiveness of a totalitarian regime in total control of the people it has turned into slaves, or the agony, desperation, and derangement of the subjugated, bereft of hope and with nothing left to lose except their lives. Or perhaps both experiences are being captured in the song. Either way, the music is utterly bleak, but utterly gripping.
-No Clean Singing
Album premiere: www.nocleansinging.com/2017/02/13/an-ncs-album-premiere-and-a-review-obitus-slaves-of-the-vast-machine/#comments
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Hypnotic Dirge Records is an independent record label and webshop based in Saskatchewan, Canada and Lisbon, Portugal active since 2008. Our intention and raison d'être is to release quality expressive and eclectic art through aural manifestations.
supported by 231 fans who also own “Slaves of the Vast Machine”
Sorrowful indeed. Utterly beautiful blackened doom metal with melody that draws out a cathartic release. Its works like these that have me believe what Schopenhauer said about music was true, that it speaks truth to what is at our most core. Camelus Dromedarius
supported by 228 fans who also own “Slaves of the Vast Machine”
PSA: if there was an album you heard a couple years ago and thought it was ok, listen to it again and you might love it.
That's what happened to me with this album. I cannot fathom why it didn't stick with me back then. Same thing happened with Decoherence's Unitarity for that matter. Matten
A blackened doom concept record about the very real problem of amphibian extinction, “Croak” is a punishing, essential listen. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 23, 2022
