Aggregating a lot of elements from other metal styles, but departing from a starting point that leaves a great deal of harmony in the air, and an impeccable degree of poetry in the melodies that falls from the chords of the stargazing alignment of galaxies glowing in the eyes of the shadows of their unlimited creativity, you get to know the best of both worlds. Having them absorbed a great trail of traditional black metal, with subtle surprises of avant-garde influences, track after track you get a lot of good and decent surprises, that will be always fulfilling yourself with enormous and incommensurable degrees of vastness, unexplainable in words, but complete in all of your senses.
Softly flirting with traditional heavy and power metal – although in a very subtle form – amalgamating a great diversity of styles without any fear of being displaced, and producing a sound peculiarly different and fresh from everybody else, Obsequiae, by Aria of Vernal Tombs, can be considered an entirely different off-shoot of BM, being almost – or certainly depending on how you see it – Folkloric black metal, having created an entirely different sonorous identity by their own right, fulfilling a creative path that hardly anybody else could have gathered, if not them exclusively and intrinsically.
Nevertheless, contrary to what one might think, all of this originality does show some very strong roots, and unforgiving debts. A lot of passages sometimes remembers a lot the sound of mid-period Rotting Christ (1996-2006), tough it is way distant of being considered a generic derivative. Uncommon to black metal as well, their sound features exceedingly melodic guitar lines, and almost acoustic passages, that passes on the verge of popular gypsy music. As a matter of fact, vocals are the only feature on this record that could be strictly considered black metal. The songs usually have a very regular rhythm, never being too slow, but on the other hand, with rare exceptions, never going too fast. Symphonic elements have also prominent parts on it, which gives Aria of Vernal Tombs a very colorful atmosphere of uncommon musical treatment, transpiring an unusual domain of artistic certainty, that disposes a lot of magical arpeggios in a dark rainbow of lurid nights, in a place where their music is eternal, and the imperial supremacy of their music creates a lot of desires in the mind of the listeners. So, you can bet that Aria of Vernal Tombs, by Obsequiae, is a great album indeed! One you should listen at least a hundred times, if not more.
Wagner