On November 14th, Rising Nemesis Records will release Apotheosis, the debut album of the Venetian extreme metal band Obscura Qalma, a record that provides the follow-up to their 2019 EP, Sheol to the Apeiron. Creating what the band describe as “blackened heavily orchestrated death metal”, they have drawn influence from the likes of Behemoth and Septicflesh, Death and Dissection, Hypocrisy and classical music, and film-score composers such as Alexandre Desplat.

But the band’s influences and inspirations are not limited to musical ones. They have created elaborate hybrids of sound in service of philosophical investigations that are equally elaborate. As the band explain: “”Inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud, as well as by contemporary figures such as Massimo Recalcati and James Owen Weatherall, Apotheosis (from the Greek meaning, “To Deify”) explores human existence in an epistemological solipsistic view. Elevated to divine status, from a higher point we can look at the external world as an unresolvable question rather than actually false.”

One single from the album has surfaced so far, and today we present a second one — “Awaken A Shrine To Oblivion” — which happens to be the track that closes Apotheosis. It manages to be both elaborately theatrical and chillingly unearthly, both futuristic and primeval, and it strikes with immense power. Continue reading »