The opening title track, “The Calm Fire” might be misleading. Wobbling basses and the smooth, but sober electronic layers only announce the storm to come. I think a smart exploration of those fancy elements and a proper use of them along the brutal riffing, the death fueled vocals and the metalcore flavoured build-ups would add a great support to the musical experiment of Mohammed Sawan, the brain and musician behind this Abu Dhabi project.
“The Oppressed” it’s an intense and exciting journey on the wings of progressive death metal with several metalcore taste like breaks and neo-classic, Yngwie Malmsteen flavoured, powerful guitar passages. If Malmsteen would ever try to play death metal, that definitively would sound like “FAIL! Try Again”. Even the clean vocals reminded me of the Swedish guitar hero. The breakdown it’s very classy, heavy metal fueled, but some of the riffs are also extremely power/speed metal fueled. Extremely technical, but still soulful and expressive mixture of styles and sounds. Read more Obselion – The Calm Fire, EP (2012)