Obscure Infinity - Putrefying Illusins (2012)

   2 years after their debut "Dawn of Winter", that was raw, complex and heavy the same time, Obscure Infinity had an interesting return. "Putrefying Illusions" might sound like an unexpected style switch at first, but even though it seems quite different than the first album, the concept didn't change, and the same the style features determining the second record than the first one. It's only a bit different aspect of the same thing.

   Basically "Putrefying Illusions" was a definite step into one direction of the various posssible options that have been led open on "Dawn of Winter". And it was committed pretty well. The sound completely changed to a strongly black metal-compatible softer, atmospheric way. That's not only well suiting for their frequently returning blackened themes, but also for the effectiveness of the melodies they're operating with. The short, melodic solos having some ancient '80s vintage impression by their echoing sound, but except those and the longer duration of melodies, their music didn't change much. Still, this little change and the sound switch was enough for the music to drift closer to melodic death metal. Calm instrumental tracks are assisting as an extension of this endeavour, but it's important to mention that all of these mentioned features were enough to turn "Putrefying Illusins" to an ordinary melodic death album. It's still way more aggressive and heavy for that, and interestingly some leading themes are even referring old school bands like Autopsy. From another hand: it's exactly how melodic death metal supposed to sound like, by keeping the basic style features, but offering them with a  more melodic background (unlike how the subgenre ended up and became widespread, by losing all of it's referring style features). The complexity that blocked the first album to be unified, is not possible to sense on "Putrefying Illusions", cause the blackened atmosphere and the catchy melodies created the frame that was directly leading to the desired unified sound and to a well composed album.