SEMBLANT
“OBSCURA”
Album Review by Piers Renfree

8.5/10

What-ho boys and girls, how are we all doing this fine day?

Well, after having lived in this hamster cage sized flat for twenty years, the Housing Association have decided to catch up with the 80’s and give us Gas heating. Maybe they have been listening to the great music of the 80’s as well, “The Number Of The Beast”, “Screaming For Vengeance”, “Diary Of A Madman”, “Last In Line”… I’m sure that someone is getting all misty eyed over those long, distant days. Anyway, I digress, my point is that we have workmen outside digging up the road and car park and a jolly fine racket they are making too.

Now, as for jolly fine rackets, who do we have lined up for our listening pleasure today? Well, we have the Brazilian melodic death metal band Semblant and their latest album, “Obscura”.

Currently comprising of Mizuho Lin (female vocals), Sergio Mazul (male vocals), Julian Ribeiro (lead guitar), Johann Piper (bass guitar), Thorp Sikora (drums) and J. Augusto (keyboards), the six-piece band hail from Curitiba, Parana in Brazil and were formed in the year 2006.

To date, Semblant have two E.P.’s – “Behold The Real Semblant” (2008) and “Behind The Mask” (2011) – as well as three full length studio albums – “Last Night Of Mortality” (2010), “Lunar Manifesto” (2014) and this year’s “Obscura”. The band have raked up an impressive thirty million plus views on YouTube for their singles “What Lies Ahead”, “Dark Of The Day” and “Incinerate” from their second album “Lunar Manifesto”. So, if you like this record, then that’s a nice little back-catalogue for you to get your teeth into this summer.

The eleven tracks on “Obscura” run for forty-eight minutes and forty-nine seconds. Atmospheric keyboards fade in and then we’re off with a rip-roaring belter, the type of thing that turns fields full of campers into brutal moshpits. The vocals trade from clean and melodic, to guttural death metal vocals – the two singers Mizuho Lin and Sergio Mazul working together and pulling off the vocal trick that was brought to peoples attention back in the 90’s by Fear Factory’s Burton C Bell. And they even add some black metal shrieks that the Norwegian bands of the 90’s were attempting. Juliano Ribeiro pulls off some great guitar solos, that even the mighty DragonForce would be proud of.

The band don’t let up, launching straight into another belter. The production is top notch, it’s crystal clear, allowing everyone to be heard, whilst the sounds that the band produce pummel your little grey cells into liquid jelly.

Girls and boys, this is a cracking record, in fact it’s the best metal album by a bunch of Brazilians, that I have heard since a certain Sepultura dropped their “Roots” album on the world over twenty years ago.

Semblant are being awarded a solid 8.5/10 for this superb album. Until next time, toodle – pip. 

TRACKLIST

Murder Of Crows
Left Behind
Dethrone The Gods, Control The Masters (Legacy Of Blood pt.IV)
Mere Shadow
Porcelain
The Hunter, The Hunger (Legacy Of Blood pt.V)
Wasteland
Barely Breathing
Wallachia
Daydream Tragedy
Insomnia

https://www.facebook.com/semblantband/

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