Total Obscurity is the third album from the Greek proto-Metal band Night Resident. They flirt with a similar brand of saccharine melodies to offset the rock edge. The double-tracked vocal harmonies are effective at times; for every song, they create a uniformity to their sound that is hard to shake, but first, let’s clear the air about something: these guys are marketed as being a “dark” rock band. As someone whose name is associated with being a purveyor of dark music, it would be a betrayal of trust for me to say anything that implies there is anything dark going on here.
This is even if I were to grade darkness on a sliding scale, and say it did not have to measure up to Chelsea Wolfe or Type O Negative to be considered dark, but it would be a whole lot cooler if it were. If that is the bad news, then the good news is, if you like to smoke dope and listen to catchy tunes that could have come from the seventies, I say the seventies because those bands still had a contact high from the sixties going on. It’s easy to lower your expectations on the dark part and take this album from this angle, since they are not dressing up like spooky priests or gremlins, so they do not have to sound creepy.
What this album has going for it is the great guitar playing. They can bust out guitar solos without getting caught up in shredding, which has become a lost art. Their guitar solos serve the song and show they have the chops to do it. Some songs rock harder than others, as “Summer Night Tale” is trummed out more like a sixties pop song, before it finds the first chug. They are good enough singers to pull off what they are doing, and I actually prefer singing to growling or screaming, but more dynamic vocals with some balls to them are the preferred method, but not everyone holds vocals under such a finely tuned microscope.
Oddly enough, the song “Dark Alleys” is not dark either. Come on, guys, what kind of world are we living in here? What does work for them is more Judas Priest guitar vibes of “Final Words.” The bass intro to “Ghosts of the Future” also held some promise, though overall, there was just enough of a subtle change to make it feel like a different song. There is, at times, some melancholy on the last song, but notably, if you keep your Halloween decorations up all year, there are other albums that might be a better investment.
This album is rainy day listening for the stoner chick who dresses goth but has a live laugh love sign up in her kitchen. The vibe check might be off, but these guys do pour their hearts into their brand of rock’ n roll that fans of melodic Rock music from yesteryear like Blue Öyster Cult might appreciate. Well-adjusted suburban kids who like rock guitar solos should also give this one a listen.
Buy the album here:
https://nightresident.bandcamp.com/album/total-obscurity
7 / 10
WIL CIFER
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