Obvurt – The Beginning (Brutal Mind)

Wednesday, 31st March 2021
Rating: 7.5/10

Always nice to see a bit of a success story when it comes to musicians. In this case, Philippe Drouin was in a car accident five years ago, which injured his right wrist to the point where guitar playing was not a possibility anymore. Instead of throwing in the towel, he bought a left-handed guitar and began anew. The Beginning is the first offering from Obvurt, which Drouin plays guitar and vocals for, and serves as an introduction to their particular brand of brutal death metal.

Frantic pacing and some technical chops are what you can expect from Obvurt, all while serving the nature of the song. Meaning that the technicality is embedded and makes sense within the tracks, instead of using it as the base to build the band from and feeling more showy. Obvurt instead keeps all the aggression at the forefront, and it frequently doubles down on the speed. Of course, there are some melodic touches now and again like the ending of “Obverted” or the more brooding outro “The End,” but expect most of the tracks (“Osteophyte”) to be energetic and get right to the point. To that end, it really works out to the band’s benefit. The music is intense and while it does enjoy a good jolt of velocity, some slower segments keep the listener on their toes and bring in a different sort of brutality to balance it all out with some heavy groove. Just what you’d like to hear with this sort of thing, right?

The Beginning is a suitable introduction for Obvurt, and one that does a good job of checking all of the necessary boxes for extremity. It can hit urgent speeds, dish out some crushing grooves, serve up technical riffing, and sling in a melody or two when the time is right. Worth a look if you need something on the brutal side of things.

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