Obscure Sphinx are definitely a gem kept well hidden until now: despite the enthusiastic feedback obtained on the occasion of their first full length (Anaesthetic Inhalation Ritual – 2011), and even more with the second (Void Mother – 2013), I doubt that the vast majority of fans would pronounce their name rather than that of Cult Of Luna, just to make an example, having to mention a prominent band in the post metal scene today. Epitaphs thus constitutes yet another telluric shock caused by the appearance on the scene at the beginning of the decade of a band like the Polish one, in possession of all the chrisms to overthrow hierarchies already written and established. An album like this does not have a single weak point, if we do not want to consider as such the need to listen to it with due attention because, although it seems superfluous to say, here we are faced with almost an hour of music definitely not for everyone. Dangerous music for the spasmodic intensity that pours out of the speakers when an amazing vocalist for versatility as Zofia attacks the audience with her frightening scream growl, before calming down and assuming almost angelic features, very deceptive for their apparent reassuring intent. In a tourbillon of disorienting sensations, Obscure Sphinx tell in their own way life and death, and our contradictions, ferocity, anger, dismay, fragility, abandonment and disenchantment, revealing themselves as the ideal modern singers of a human race now alien to the planet that hosts it. The perfect blend of post metal, doom and ambient, combined in turn with an overbearing progressive nature, will bring more than one to try to approach the group of Warsaw to some prominent name in the scene, trying to guess or see correspondences and assorted affinities: wasted effort, these are just Obscure Sphinx, authors of an album that drains for intensity and in constant crescendo from the first to the last note. The best tracks? All of them, because as soon as one will nail us to the chair, the next one will appear even more beautiful, in a sort of endless loop that starts with the last note of At The Mouth Of The Sounding Sea and starts again with the first note of Nothing Left.
This authentic masterpiece, which I fear will struggle to make a breakthrough in a country like ours, where those who listen to certain music is confined in a narrow virtual bubble along with a few other tormented souls, is yet another insult to those who despise regardless of all the musical art of stellar quality that the underground produces continuously; Of course, an interpreter with an “illegal” talent like Zofia would be able to transform with his touch the lead into gold and water into wine, but here we are talking about a band with a capital B, with each of its components that is equally decisive for the success of the work. Epitaphs represents the current state of the art of post metal, no need to add more.
2016 – Independent
Mournful Sounds 
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