OBSEQUIAL JOY – Show My Mercy
- Posted on 05-08-2021
The obscure entity known as Obsequial Joy, which hails from Taiwan, is an interesting mixture of funeral doom metal, lo-fi dark ambient, and black metal. I have seen the term "post-black metal" being thrown around out there on the web whenever the discussion revolves around this five-track opus, and despite it being a rather vague and diffuse label, it does seem to apply to this outfit’s musically experimental and dense piece of work.
It took a little while for me to truly absorb this stuff and wrap my head around it. Not because it is utterly complex, infinitely layered, or anything like that. Rather, it is a somewhat fragmented album where several parts of it sound and feel a little disjointed, which also entails that the record is not as cohesive or coherent as it could have been. But make no mistake, there is a lot of cool stuff going on here too and we slip from slow, crushing waves of doom to raw ambient soundscapes and further on to relatively fast-paced black metal-ish passages and even sections that are carnivalesque and avantgarde. Darkness, gloom, muffled dialogues, disembodied voices, growls of anger, an atmosphere that reeks of despair, mournful pianos, whispers – there are many wicked ideas in play here and at times it feels as if one is adrift in a sea of loss and regret. I also love the fact that those bass lines are so prominent in the mix as they add some punch and melodic flair to the proceedings.
"Show My Mercy" definitely has something to offer and it is a thoroughly morose slab of strangely unsettled music, but it lacks an organic flow and the ability to truly captivate the listener for 32 minutes. Still, I am very much looking forward to their next release as there is plenty of potential and promise here. Try it out if you need something that is brooding and intense in your life.