Pestilence picked a tough year to release Obsideo (Candlelight). Release this or pretty much any other year since they split, and they’d have waded tall, as returning champions, through the mire of a bloated, sterile, turgid scene that, deathcore aside (and let’s just leave that one well to one side… Ideally outside. On its own. Standing against the wall, thinking about what it did), had barely spewed one original idea into the void for over a decade.

But come 2013, and death metal (if a scene can have a collective sentience) has finally, by osmosis (and lashings of Deathspell Omega), begun to mutate and create; this year being its most vibrant since 1993. Portal kicked things off with the mind-melting Vexovoid before Gorguts and Ulcerate brought dark, discordant masterpieces to the bloodied table, amongst others. Even the old-guard are rejuvenated, Autopsy and Immolation came out swinging, and Suffocation’s feral Pinnacle of Bedlam tore off faces. MMXIII has been death metal’s year.

So against this backdrop, and having headed back into the fray with a somewhat under-whelming return since 2008, can Pestilence stand up to the competition?

Once the opening heartbeat gives way to a sampled flat-line, pure Death is released in a battering cascade of flailing percussion and visceral guitaring that is opener and title-track ‘Obsideo’. Patrick Mameli’s fusing of thrashy-death metal with added technical flair is at the heart of second track, ‘Displaced’ as the album finds its rhythm, with plenty of Chuck Schuldiner homage prevalent throughout. ‘Aura Negative’ is a throat-ripper, ‘NecroMorph,’ and ‘Laniatus’ are resplendent in Gojira-isms ramped to 666, but Obsideo is at its’ best when mid-tempo stompier, simpler riffs merge into off-kilter timings and discordant tech-DM. This is none more evident than in the closing trio of ‘Saturation’, ‘Transition’ and ‘Superconscious’, the latter of which could sit proudly on the underrated Formulas Fatal To The Flesh.

24 years after setting the standards for all those to follow with Consvming Impvlse, by refusing to relive his own past Mameli has shown Pestilence can still live up to their legacy by refusing to imitate it.

7.5/10

Steve Tovey