• Reviews

• All
• Music
• DVDs
• Live
• Cinema
• TV
• Books
• Comic Books
• Video Games

The Obsessed

Apr 26, 2024 By Matthew Berlyant Photography by Matthew Berlyant Web Exclusive

It’s not often that a show feels absolutely perfect, but it was such an occasion on this pleasant night in Brooklyn. I relished the chance to see veteran DC area doom/stoner metal legends The Obsessed and instead what I got was even better. Not only was there a great Obsessed set, but I also discovered a great new (to me) band as well. I’m getting a little ahead of myself, though. Supporting the recently released the excellent Gilded Sorrow, their first album since 2017 and only their fifth overall in an over forty(!) year career, they played a stomping, heavy set for an hour with material spanning their entire career. The last two albums (including 2017’s also excellent Sacred) and 1994’s The Church Within (their only album on a major label) were hit the hardest, but no Obsessed set can be complete with their first EP’s “Sodden Jackal” (the colloquial namesake of said EP, though it was later re-recorded for Sacred) and older material like “The Way She Fly.” For Gilded Sorrow’s “Stoned Back to the Bomb Age,” singer/guitarist Scott “Wino” Weinrich called out warmongers and others, alluding to current events very much on our collective minds. Besides the crushing power of their set, another cool thing is that Weinrich and the rest of the band (including new guitarist Jason Taylor) started setting up on stage right after the openers, thus foregoing any pretense or rock star style build-up and adding a communal element to the proceedings, thus cementing or at the very least alluding to the very punk-like attitude of separation between audience and performer. And both bands and the other fans couldn’t have been nicer. I knew only one person there (an internet friend who I recognized and met in person for the first time), but by the end of the night, it felt like I was part of the community.

What made the show even better was being blown away by the incredible Howling Giant, a Nashville-based doom/stoner band who were The Obsessed’s main support up through this, the last night of the tour. Calling them merely a doom/stoner band does them a bit of a disservice, though, as their incredible harmony vocals reminded this writer of no less than Alice in Chains, yet at other times they were as heavy as your average death metal band. It’s quite a trick, but in this case, they have mastered all of these styles and created their own. I wasn’t familiar with their material before the show, but they said they were playing their brilliant new album Glass Future in full. Forty-five minutes later, I’d found a new favorite modern band in this genre. Wow!