Kamera Obscura is a French band that came into the scene in 2008. They describe their type of music as “Cinematic & Heavy”, but the sound is maintained mainly within industrial metal norms. Together with The Black Planet we have an opportunity to check their third and latest record ‘The Final Cut’.
To be honest I didn’t knew what to expect from this record as the only Kamera Obscura track I have heard before was a cover of Rob Zombie’s ‘Super Beast’, which was kind of cool. As on the previous albums, the band is mixing the music with their love of science fiction and horror movies – all the titles are associated with the movies and the lyrics are focused on the plot of the movies.
This record starts with ‘The Howling’ – a song that slowly evolving into heavy and catchy track with nice clean, mostly sung vocals provided by the vocalist Cecilie. The musical part is based on the guitars and slow repeatable synth sounds hiding in the background. It’s a nice opening for the album maintained between industrial and symphonic metal.
One of the stronger songs in the entire record is “Maniac”, one that shows latter in the album. Here, synthesizers are much more present than in the aforementioned track. In here, all is built around the great voice of Cecilie – she creates an atmosphere of the horror happening within the song. Great sounding guitars, as well as a fast pace provided by the drums and bass are making this song a complete work. For sure one of the most interesting pieces on this record.
Next interesting piece is “Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls” – where nice and catchy, almost pop, tunes are completed with the horror like sounds delivered by the synth keys. This time the vocals are all on the same level, without any scream parts. And this formula is kept onto “Lucifer Rising”, which is one of the slower tracks on this record – a song filled with strange, scary sounds based on slow guitar riff and a bass line.
Closing the record, we find another slower and atmospheric part – the track “Antichrist”. In here, the band is far from the industrial tunes. It is the first track on the records where the bass is playing a bigger role. This song is kept in a more symphonic metal aesthetics, being nice closure for the whole piece.
“The Final Cut” is an interesting combination on symphonic metal and industrial music. Album is parked in between these 2 genres and it is quite an interesting combination. The strong part of Kamera Obscura’s music is the vocals provided by Cecilie. This album will definitely be warmly welcomed by the fans of horror movies who will find references both in the song titles and lyrics.
7/10
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