
While there are no extravagant innovations on this record, the guitar lines and their expansive capacities are worked to define and conceive parallel universes of personal restlessness, that extends the creative perceptions of the genre to a more effective and salutary ground. With six tracks – 1) The Birth of Fear; 2) Every Heart Hides a Killer; 3) A Shore Without a Sea; 4) Strangers; 5) The Demolished Man; 6) The Play; – Strangers can be classified as a diligent and gracefully conceived album, sometimes almost poetic in the volatile paroxysm of its brilliance. Nevertheless, musically, to a minor degree the work resents itself of some limitations, though this fact, in a general evaluation, doesn’t do the album any significant harm.
With some exceptional qualities that makes their style to be somewhat superior to other bands of the genre – especially on a technical level –, Obsidian Sea definitely proves a point with this album, displaying a talent and a creative musical disposition that deserves to be appreciated. While they have to work it out some minor structural limitations, their music is exotic and full of discreetly irreplaceable virtues, that revolves around a peculiar conjuncture of elements ostensibly aligned with an intuitive perception clearly entrenched to the genuine spirit of their artistry.
Attractive, intense and filled with a gracefully ardent set of harmonies that work out the best the genre has to offer, Strangers is a very good album, that definitely delivers to its audience a marvelous degree of sensibility, that rejuvenates the quintessential elements of its own nature. While on the other hand you can’t expect too much from this album because there isn’t major innovations here, definitely Obsidian Sea has the competence, the abilities and the talent to please with a high degree of satisfaction the most inveterate enthusiasts of the genre.
Wagner