[Welcome to this special edition of From The Metal Archives, meant to showcase two things that happened on the Transcending Obscurity Records Bandcamp page. One, in January ALL albums on the page are available as name-your-price downloads! Two, the label released a massive sampler with 52 tracks meant as a "contemporary annual preview of the new music that we're working with and what you can expect in the times to come".
I also found two earlier death metal releases that were well received by The Metal Archives reviewers. One is better known and more progressive than the other, both are great examples of the breath of death metal found on the Transcending Obscurity roster.]
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| Artwork by Alex Tartsus. |
[The Metal Archives reviewer Chris Jennings said]
One of the UK’s leading death metal acts return with album number 5, and De Profundis haven’t sounded this focused and this ferocious in years. Perpetually progressive, subtly melodic and yet as savage as they come, De Profundis sound rejuvenated here and The Blinding Light Of Faith is an eye-opening blast of technical death metal brutality. [read Chris Jennings's full review here]
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[The Metal Archives reviewer TheStormIRide said]
While band’s lyrical themes may be rooted in the realms of human thought and emotional experience, their music is a real it gets. The band describes themselves as old school death metal, but a more apt description would be the steamrolling, oft-militant school of Bolt Thrower or Hail of Bullets. Despite ascribing to that style, the band brings an extremely varied songwriting style to the table. The seventeen minute album spends most its time hammering your skull with a mix of fast paced, chunky riffing and angular chord progressions, but the band slows things up with a few crawling tempos that could sink ships. [read TheStormIRide's full review here]
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| Artwork by Turkka Rantanen. |
[Taken from the Transcending Obscurity Bandcamp page:] This is our most ambitious and diverse label sampler yet. The bands have been carefully handpicked to represent what we feel is the best expression for that particular genre and as such this sampler is segregated as per the different styles we're specializing in. There's death metal, grind/crust, technical death metal, black metal, sludge metal, doom metal and of course the avant-garde bands. Here's a rough demarcation of the genres where possible:
Tracks 1-23 - death metal/grind/crust
Tracks 24-26 - technical death metal
Tracks 27-31 - sludge/doom metal
Tracks 32-41 - black metal
Tracks 42-48 - doom/death metal
Tracks 49-52 - avant-garde metal