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Review: Obliveon - Cybervoid
Obliveon
www.facebook.com/OBLIVEON-253771635187
Cybervoid

Label: Hypnotic Records
Year released: 1997
Originally released in: 1995
Duration: 46:14
Tracks: 12
Genre: Thrash Metal

Rating:
4/5


Review online: April 3, 2021
Reviewed by: Luxi Lahtinen
Readers' Rating
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Rated 4/5 (80%) (5 Votes)
Review

Obliveon's third album, Cybervoid, was a massive departure from their previous two albums, and it's often seen as a serious letdown by fans. The band recruited Bruno Bernie to handle vocals and became a five-piece, and from there they traded in their Technical Death/Thrash sound for something more mechanical and Groove-oriented while still containing enough Thrash to be considered a Metal album. This change in style led to many avoiding it and later releases from the band like the plague, which is a shame, because to my ears it's a refreshing change of pace.

People tend to dismiss this album by saying that it saw Obliveon turning into Meshuggah, and I suppose you can hear some of that in their incorporation of Groove, but that's not to say it's derivative or dumbed down in the slightest. If anything, Cybervoid is significantly darker, heavier, more complex, and more experimental than their past works, making for what may be their most ambitious and novel album overall. That's not to say that it's as good as something like Nemesis, and indeed tracks like "Psychomatrix" can easily turn off the average metalhead with how cold and robotic they sound, but then you get songs like the title track, "Downward", "Perihelion", and "Android Succubus", which contain plenty of crushing rhythms, monstrous riffs, and unexpected tempo changes to remind you that you're listening to an Obliveon album first and foremost.

Anyone looking for another From This Day Forward will be left cold but, from where I stand, this serves as an adventurous and ambitious album from one of Canada's finest that mostly succeeds at what it strives for. If you don't mind it being radically different from Obliveon's older material, the mechanized hatred of Cybervoid is well worth checking out.

More about Obliveon...
Review: Carnivore Mothermouth (reviewed by Luxi Lahtinen)
Review: From This Day Forward (reviewed by Luxi Lahtinen)
Review: Nemesis (reviewed by Luxi Lahtinen)
Interview with guitarist Pierre RĂ©millard on February 5, 2021 (Interviewed by Luxi Lahtinen)
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