Death metal has just taken a unique twist through the likes of Obsidian Monolith, a Melbourne-based melodic death metal band which draws from different genres to create their dense sound.
They have been working on their debut album Manifest, which they are soon to perform live at The Bendigo Hotel. They’ll also be sharing the stage with other bands such as Rituals, As Flesh Decays, Myriad Drone and Suldusk.
“This year we’re focusing on playing with bigger bands, which means bigger gigs and bigger venues,” lead guitarist Maurizio Piras says. “We’ve got an EP launch at The Bendigo Hotel on Saturday March 2, which we’re pretty excited about. I think it’s a bit unusual for local bands to do a one-hour set, but we are doing a one-hour set.”
Their album Manifest is layered and obscure, lyrically exploring nihilism and its impact on the human condition.
“It comes from a strong environmental background of really pushing the waters, based on things that are happening in the world right now,” vocalist and guitarist Axel Kilby says. “It explores the degree of how detrimental humanity has been to earth, and I think the songs reflect that mentality.
“It’s about the day-to-day grind of what we all go through and the stuff we all think about saying but we’re not sure if we should say. It’s about how our choices affect the environment and our behaviour as human beings.”
The band have also developed musically since their formation in 2016, adopting a slower but heavier sound.
“We started out as a solo project in 2015 with a rough idea of how our music was meant to be,” Piras says. “We weren’t following specific sub-genres of metal – it’s quite funny because I’m influenced by classical and jazz music, which transmits to our sound and because of the heaviness of the music, we classify ourselves as melodic death metal.
“We have some interests in black metal and technical death metal, but we put it all together in a way that we don’t belong to any of those individually. We became a band in 2016 and we always try to push a little bit further – we’ve progressively gotten heavier and more technical, but we’re not playing as fast as we were.
“Our bass player Bryce [Hubai] comes from a grunge background, Maurizio comes from a classical background so we’ve combined that with my mellow death and doom background to create our music,” Kilby says.
Obsidian Monolith derive their musical inspiration from Australian bands such as Be’lakor, Meridian and Ne Obliviscaris.
“A lot of these Aussie bands have been a really big influence,” Maurizio says. “I think it [Australia’s death metal scene] is growing.
“Since being on the circuit, we’ve seen a lot of bands that were probably garage projects when they first started, really come into their own and I would say the death scene is definitely developing as there are a lot of young and upcoming bands doing really cool stuff. I think in the next few years, the Australian death metal scene will be amazing,” Kilby says.
Formerly a five-piece band for just under two years, Obsidian Monolith have since shifted to become a four-piece.
“We’ve been playing for a four-piece for six months but previously we were a five-piece,” Axel says. “We’ve played three or four shows as a four-piece and we’ve been really happy about it. We see people hearing our music, that’s what it’s all about and that feeds our live energy, we get a bunch of people loving it and our live shows go through the roof.”
Concluding that they want to expand their reach and achieve as much as they can, Piras understands that this starts with the live stage.
“We want to play the best shows ever and expand our following. We are enjoying music and we want to see how far we can take it.”
Obsidian Monolith come to The Bendigo Hotel on Saturday March 2. Head to the venue website for tickets. Their new album, Manifest, will be released in 2019.
