“Now I leave thee for dead, and I begin.”
Much like deathcore, slam, as a genre, for most of its existence, has been widely disregarded by the general metal-listening public due to its rigid one-note style that many of its practitioners have followed. Thankfully, not every slam band is a mere carbon copy of others. Enter Stabbing, who, since starting their musical trek in 2021, have been consistently releasing. Their 2022 album, Extripated Mortal Process, managed to avoid the stereotypes of the genre by focusing on mature songwriting rather than pure fury. Today, we see the band return with their new album, Eon Of Obscenity. Once again, Stabbing‘s track record of writing engaging slam records continues.
Eon Of Obscenity does not offer much in the way of new elements when it comes to the average slam experience. However, what sets it apart is how dynamic each song manages to be while still retaining quintessential slam rudiments. Normally, bands in this genre stick to either a slow but bludgeoning pace or one that’s fast enough to rival even the techiest of bands. Throughout Eon Of Obscenity, you will find there is a two-way approach where the quick, technical parts often lead into a slower but satisfyingly brutal section. Songs like the opening track “Roting Eternal” and “Their Melted Remains” exemplify this very well. Although most tracks on the album stick to melding both styles of slam together, songs like “Nauseating Composition” adhere mostly to the slowburner pace that many listeners of slam have come to expect, while other parts of Eon Of Obscenity play more into Stabbing‘s technical side, to show just how much variety the album has.
While the album’s variety and dynamic songwriting are no doubt its greatest strengths, another facet that makes Eon Of Obscenity stand out from the dense modern slam crowd is how much groove it packs. A major example of this can be heard in “Masticate The Subdued”. On its own, ”Masticate The Subdued” is a fairly straightforward slam track. With a brief techy burst at the beginning of the song, it’s got a slow, crushing pace that doesn’t include many twists or turns when it comes to riff variety. This groovy bounce provides an anthemic feel for not just the song, but Eon Of Obscenity as a whole, eliminating any monotony that would normally be found across much of slam.
While Eon Of Obscenity as a whole has songs that will appeal to any kind of slam listener out there, it would have been more refreshing if the album had shown off the more technical or slow, brutal sides of Stabbing‘s sound rather than sticking to its mostly best-of-both-worlds approach.
Eon Of Obscenity is a monumental record in the modern slam scene. It manages to avoid the pitfalls that many bands typically get trapped by and crafts an experience so engaging that it’s only a matter of time until Stabbing are just as lauded as the titans of the genre.
9/10
Eon Of Obscenity releases January 30 via Century Media Records, and you can pre-order it here.