OBSCURA QALMA - Immortality Through Ashes

That’s not to say it sounds like an opera, though. The Seventh Exile almost jumpscares with immediate, visceral density, layered with lyrics detailing the suffering that accompanies the process of dying whilst being horrifically aware of the fact. The repeating ascending motif drops out for a meticulously tight guitar solo, swirling and ascending like smoke as he is burnt at the pyre. The progression through the veil takes pause for no one. 

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There are about 10 seconds of moonlit reprieve before tremolo guitars of Fire Tongues Speak Empty Words take over, and combined with the moments of emptiness and occasional choral synths create a shimmery gauze of texture. Delayed guitars fade in and out of consciousness, in and out of the corporeal world.

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Obsidian Numen introduces the black deity as both a supporting character and a representation of the metaphysical. He is unsure of where he is or what to believe, and is mentally, “synaptic[ally] scarred.” At the edge of an ultimatum of whether to rise above or sink below, Obscura Qalma break to quote Immanuel Kant’s The Pure Reason - “All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.” - as the crux of the decision and, cleverly, as foreshadowing the character’s end. As the grandiosity of the arrangement explodes, so does his ego. His choice is to run wholeheartedly to the dark choice, the morally corrupt option; “pain is reborn, metabolized to devour itself again.” 

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The protagonist emerges in The Venomous Oracle guttural, distorted and swinging, vitriol aimed squarely at the whole of humanity. Narcissism and ego slither to the surface, roiling out of rhythm guitar, dense like a tide, laced with hate spewed without reserve. “Fear is the only comfort you’ve ever known.” 

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A Sepulchural Obsession is the psychological projection of ego death onto the protagonist’s former lover; and the slow, subconscious revelation that he was in love with the control, not with the person. The caustic delivery of “my dear love” is anything but tender. Towards the end, the declaration of “I am the painter” is embedded in staunch pillars of blast beats, infinitely more affirmed than any lines attached to vulnerable emotion. Death is not tragic when it means there’s no voice of dissent.

After his lover is dead, his reflections refract in Sapphire Epitaph. It is an act in two parts; at first, the density is pared back and hollowed out, before the second half showcases crystalline guitar work as he reworks his parting memories of them, completely unable to appreciate them as a lover and only resent them as having enacted a great hardship upon him by the unforgivable act of leaving. The impassivity to come is already planted, as he both expresses his loss of “the will to dwell” yet has not yet considered an alternative to the path he travels. 

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Hollow Bastion is the return of rage. It is impossible for a narcissist to remain vulnerable, and like a snake he returns to the shadows of the crypt. He is where he dreamt of being- “wasn’t this what I always wanted?”- but the depths are a lonely place. Glassy guitar effects shatter the illusion, the encroaching reality that to be “neither bound to shadow nor released to light” is to be left in permanent limbo. To choose the dark path is not to choose power.

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The bottom of the pits of hell is not a dramatic battle scene, but the complete absence of anything at all. Anhedonia.exe in title alone refers to a complete lack of interest in anything and a file type of pre-assigned tasks, and the protagonist has met an anticlimactic end; narcissistic collapse. Riffs move downwards instead of ascending- there is no more hope in a rise to unchecked power- and inhuman, ghastly screams situate a man who regrets his choices. There is no joy where nothing grows, no love where no light touches. The opera closes a tragedy.

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Obscura Qalma deploy every available tool in their arsenal with a deeply considered, compositional directness. There’s a clear understanding that in order to emphasise how long the fall is, one must be enamoured with the height. It is precisely their juxtaposition of void against spiralling, aggressive assault that renders Immortality Through Ashes as much a dramatic opera akin to the likes of Verdi as much as it is a phenomenally executed expansive black metal album. A timeless cautionary tale on ego death and hollow death, Obscura Qalma are librettists of the highest degree.

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SCORE 9.5/10

Reviewed by Charlie Fern