sharks shark circling and, secondly, that artwork. Now it is true that, as Cherd‘s overqualified eye spotted at first glance, the image is AI generated (apparently by feeding the relevant program on a diet of Obelyskkh lyrics) but it’s also true, in my view at least, that it’s fucking cool. Will confirmed AI artwork be eligible for the only prize in art that matters, GardensTale‘s end of year Top Ten(ish) Album Art list? Only GT can tell us but for now, it’s my favorite cover of the still-young year. As for the slab o’ sludge it’s wrapped around, well, let’s see, shall we?
Germany’s Obelyskkh have been knocking around for a while now, having dropped their full-length debut, Mount Nysa, in 2011. The Ultimate Grace of God is the band’s fifth album and comes five years after their last, with the intervening period seemingly beset by COVID- and cash-driven troubles that delayed it time and again. Now down to a guitar-bass-drum trio, second guitarist Stuart “The WhizKid” West having left in 2017, Obelyskkh has leaned into a rough, almost punky, form of noise sludge, that owes a fairly significant debt to the likes of Melvins, The Jesus Lizard and even Dwarves. Far from the majestically crushing sound I’d hoped for, and having ditched the synth-driven psychedelic nods of their own earlier work, The Ultimate Grace of God is a stripped-back, raw affair that sees Obelyskkh swaddle themselves in a heavy cloak of fuzz and reverb, as they drudge their way through the album’s 71-long, long minutes.
Guitarist Crazy Woitek handles vocals, which oscillate between a hoarse, croaking whisper and a harsh nasal shout that rarely reaches the bellowed intensity of your normal doomy sludge fare, like early Mastodon. His work on guitar is straightforward, majoring in repetitive, down-tuned riffs underscored by thudding bass lines courtesy of Seb Duster, with little to distinguish track from track. Similarly, the efforts of Steve “The Krusher” Paradise (I’m relying on Metal Archives for these names…) behind the kit are best described as uninspired. Not poor per se, just bland and workmanlike. Ironically, Obelyskkh are at their best when they venture out of the sludge pool they inhabit, like on the heavily distorted, d-beat opening to The Ultimate Grace of God’s title track or in the middle sections of that song, which drop off into contemplative, melodic post-metal territory. Similarly, 14-minute epic “Afterlife” sees a lot more melody and nuance creep into Obelyskkh’s sound and, although it’s a track that could stand to lose about half its runtime, there is some quality stuff in there.
Sadly, the same cannot be said of the even-longer album closer, “Sat Nam (Vision)”, which crawls towards its (and the album’s) conclusion in a slowly swirling sea of synths, wind noises and vaguely sepulchral or ritualistic chanted passages, and is precisely the wrong way to finish pretty well any album. The first few times I spun The Ultimate Grace of God, it struck me as a solid enough, if rather derivative, sliver of sludge, heavily influenced by crust punk and, at just 40-minutes, that was OK. Not great but … fine. Then, I discovered that, for whatever reason, the album’s two longest cuts (“Afterlife” and “Sat Nam (Vision)”) had failed to process properly. After fixing that, I was suddenly presented with an additional half hour and change of more experimental, psychedelic-tinged, post-metal and noise. To be honest, I preferred my first experience of Obelyskkh, not least because it finished significantly quicker.
The overall package is further let down by the production. I see what Obelyskkh was going for, with a rough, fuzzed, almost desert stoner sound, but the result misses the mark, with everything so warped and distorted that any nuance is drowned in feedback and static hiss, while the guitar and bass also smother the drums for much of The Ultimate Grace of God. Apart from the final track, there is nothing terrible in the material here. Rather, it is the cumulative effect of poor production, massive—and unjustified—runtime and monotonous, forgettable songwriting for much of the material, which euthanizes this album. Obelyskkh feels like it is lacking in inspiration but has gone all in on a mammoth album nevertheless. Apparently inspired by a hair salon in a rather rundown suburb of Antwerp called ‘The Ultimate Grace of God’, The Ultimate Grace of God has all the sparkle of the conversations I used to have while getting a short back and sides. Now bald, I can dispense with those conversations and, happily, with this album also.
Rating: 1.5/5.0
DR: 4 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Exiles on Mainstream Records
Websites: obelyskkhnoise.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/thebelyskkhritual
Releases Worldwide: January 27th, 2023
