Awesome! Awesome! Awesome!

It took me three hours to find out how to begin this review and those three words were blasting my mind while I was listening to this fantastic album again and again and again! I'll take a few deep breaths now before I continue...

OBSCURE's first album On Formaldehyde is a true, original doom Heavy album. A natural child of BLACK SABBATH, PENTAGRAM, TROUBLE and ST. VITUS that decided to mix up a bit their music with MAIDEN's double solos and the 70's good old Heavy Metal from THIN LIZZY and BLUE OYSTER CULT. It's a bloody trip back to the days when music was both Heavy and Metal.

The down-tuned guitars and the rumbling bass lines work perfectly together with a drummer who can easily do snail-slow beats as well as groovy double-time blasts while double leads scream on the foreground. The vocals are clean and powerful as a diamond cut, creating a thrilling sensation all over the album.

It gets better and better every time you listen to it. It's not a simple homage to the old-school bands of the 70s and the 80s. Their sound may belong to the past but their music is modern, a mix of the melody and the emotion of the past with the subtle progressive grooves of our time.

Unfortunately my version of the promo came with a different track listing than the one mentioned on the booklet and I can't comment on each song separately. However there isn't a single song in this CD that it is not good. There are no fillers, no indifferent tunes. Even the cover of Massacre from THIN LIZZY is exactly what a cover should be, a version of the song according to the band's own viewpoint.

At the end of the booklet, the band mentions: [Thanks to] all the bands and artists we have stolen from!. I would say thanks to OBSCURE for taking the legacy of the old and transforming it into something fresh and new, yet old and good. Buy this album people. You will not regret it.