Sonum – The Obscure Light Awaits

vote
7.5

• Band:
  Sonum
• Duration: 00:56:06
• Available from: 11/04/2025
• Label:

• Dusktone

Among the many Italian bands that try to establish themselves in the extreme musical undergrowth, the Sonums certainly present themselves with an eccentric and distinctive musical proposal: those who have not discovered them through the debut “Visceral void entropy” of a few years ago, could recover the lost time by concentrating their attention on the new “The Obscure Light Awaits”, which resumes the styles to evolve them in new, personal directions.
Summally, the music of the Vicenza trio could be defined as an accepting fusion between classic, dissonant and atmospheric death metal, in which each of the three parts coexists and struggles with the others in a perennial tussle that constantly feeds the writing of the songs contained on the disc. But there is more: the anomalous taste towards the composition is also manifested in particularly fluid, progressive structures, which allow you to follow with transport what is happening in the songs, often finding itself to turn suddenly towards emotional spectra sometimes similar, sometimes very distant. The fact then, that all this happens regularly in all songs, indicates the high dynamic degree with which “The Obscure Light Awaits” was thought and created.
That you decide to leave in the fourth, and then open up to fan towards more emotional solutions such as “In this void we dwell” or “Trappen in the Labyrinth of aberration”, or which is placed first on the Phatos and then on violence, as in “Famine” or “to Mortem (iter est)”, the band manages in any case to keep the teenage of the skein, revealing different, still complementary. To crown everything, then, a slight symphonic intake intervenes, represented by piano, arches and breathtaking instruments, which from time to time overlook the tracklist, taking over only rarely (“Two to Inner Mess …”, “Beyond the Gate”). In this sense, it would not have spoiled a greater presence of these elements, especially considered the good results achieved in the sporadic moments in which electrical music and symphonic music merge, as in the case of title-track, not surprisingly one of the best moments of the album.
Nonetheless, there is still room in the final jokes for the mysterious passages of “Nobody is innocent”, or for the touching epic of the long “Deliver US (Final Trip)”, whose labyrinthine final transition leads to the end of a dense and cumbersome, but certainly satisfying path. If it is true that this merger between the experimental and dissonant world and the most melodic and reflective one could displace – and in part discontent – both followers of the two sides, there is no doubt the courage of the Sonum in the proposal of a formula in which, excluding some references to Deathspell Omega and ulcerates, it becomes difficult to find precise influences, also a sign of a good degree of originality and inventiveness.
Satisfied by what he heard in “The Obscure Light Awaits”, we wonder what could happen if the band abandoned every inhibitor brake, and decided to throw himself into an even more radical experimentation: the skills for something excellent would all be there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1vp0jcru4u