There are bands that pay different kinds of music and make them blend in effortlessly. Then you have bands that just are suffering from Schizophrenia, or even Multiple Personality Disorder. The latter is what I suspect is the main reason for OBNOXIOUS YOUTH. I feel this used to be two bands. One from Sweden, and one from Finland. OBNOXIOUS is the one that played Chaos Metal, and YOUTH was the band that played Melodic Heavy Metal. I can’t tell you which one came from which country. Sorry. At one point in 2005 they decided to come together and make music. That in itself wasn’t a problem, but at some stage all the other personalities came to fruition, which resulted in what OBNOXIOUS YOUTH is presenting us with on “Burning Savage”.

Having been together for some 19 years, OBNOXIOUS YOUTH have been able to present the world with two demos, two singles, two EP’s and two studio albums before hitting us with “Burning Savage”. And it is an assault on just about all your senses. From the very slow BLACK SABBATH opening on “Torrents of Black Blood”, which is followed by a Glam Metal riff from the eighties. That becomes distorted and added with the sickening sound of the voice Affe ”Phantasma” Piran. Just to give you an example of what you get. “Imminent Evil” starts off with a perfectly sane Heavy Metal riff before exploding into complete chaos. And that is what is happening all over the album. OBNOXIOUS YOUTH is all over the place, and from one second to another you have no idea what to expect.

That does make listening to “Burning Savage” quite a challenge. Not one song is sane from start to finish, with the title song as a perfect example. The thing is, when band goes mad, it is also very hard to properly hear and understand what is being sung/shouted/screamed. What I can say that in order to make this kind of uncontrollable noise the musicians have to be on top of their game, need to be very good indeed. And that is one thing that is clear, they are bloody good, as the chaos never prevents the music to derail. You never can accuse the musicians not being in synch with each other when it comes to starting and stopping at the same time. But the question whether I feel this is a good album is very much undecided for me. OBNOXIOUS YOUTH are definitely different from anything else I’ve ever listened to, and I haven’t reviewed something like “Burning Savage” before. It is/was a challenge.