PESTILENCE Obsideo (2013) CD

Few bands in death metal have the kind of fractured, complicated legacy that Pestilence carry. The Dutch legends who gave the world Testimony of the Ancients and Consuming Impulse went through a long dissolution, a reunification, and a period of increasingly technical reinvention before landing here.

Obsideo, released in 2013, finds Patrick Mameli steering the ship through dense, technical death metal territory, leaning hard into the angular riffing and clinical brutality that defined their later chapter. It's not Malleus Maleficarum and it doesn't try to be, which is either the right move or a red flag depending on your relationship with the classics. Either way, this is Pestilence doing what they want, which has always been more interesting than what anyone else tells them to do.

CD. Full-length album. Origin: Netherlands. Genre: Death Metal. Year: 2013.

Fans of: Malevolent Creation, Autopsy, Morbid Angel, Sinister