Gorguts - Obscura

Artist: Gorguts
Album: Obscura
Genre: Technical Death Metal
Year: 1998
Origin: Canada

This album is filled with technical weirdness and wankery to the max. It's one of the more unique death metal releases I've come across, and though it seems like it is somewhat influential, I don't think anybody has done something quite like this since. The note progressions are unintuitive and jarring, but I can't help thinking there is a complex mathematical order to the music. I really think everyone should at least have the experience of listening to the song The Faceless Ones - it just might be my favorite death metal song ever written. 9 metal-archives reviewers gave this album an average of 93%.

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Revocation - Empires of the Obscene

Artist: Revocation
Album: Empires of the Obscene
Genre: Death Metal
Year: 2008
Origin: USA

Revocation comes up big with this debut album, a very thrashy death metal release. As you may know, I'm not big into death metal unless it has something special going for it. And this band does, with brilliant songwriting and thrash riffs that should really make anyone wonder why people buy that monotonous crap from Cannibal Corpse and the host of other generically br00tal death metal bands.

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Sleep Terror - Probing Tranquility

Artist: Sleep Terror
Album: Probing Tranquility
Genre: Technical Death Metal
Origin: USA (Seattle)
Year: 2006

I'm not normally a big death metal fan, so for me to listen to it death metal needs to be really good or really weird. This album is both. It's a purely instrumental album from a band that is now a one-man outfit (I guess some of the band's other material has death metal style vocals... but I just can't imagine that fitting in very well). The album is filled with technical guitar wankery that will please fans of Necrophagist (I am also a fan of Necrophagist), but the songs tend to be jazzy or funky as much as they are heavy.

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