The latest, and final, Brown Jenkins album Death Obsession presents me with the 7 year old conundrum. For as long as I have been writing for Metal Reviews I felt that some albums should be above the whole numerical quote assignment issues. I don’t do it often, but will invoke the seniority one more time and leave Death Obsession to my verbal evaluation. Try to follow the logic.

If black metal, on some level, is supposed to represent the descent into the deepest crevices of the human mind, then Brown Jenkins leaves no stone unturned on Death Obsession. A truly cult entity in the US black metal scene, Brown Jenkins indeed went through multiple rings of evolution to get where they are at with Death Obsession. Rumors, or not, about the mainman UA mental state aside, the album truly creates a scary unsettled feeling amidst its involved, unconventional and unique musicianship.

Death Obsession is droneous, dragging, mind polluting madness. Layers upon layers of one of a kind riffs, each of them distorted beyond recognition with clanging metallic notes, the album is as fluid as man’s brain ravaged by mad cow disease. Just for once, I would have loved to hear how this oppression could sound if all of the distortion was turned off for a moment.

With Death Obsession you can listen to any of its guitar directions, or the bass taking liberties as well. Compositions can change tempos from rocking to maniacal (Hopeless, Godlike), but when the changing tempos hit funeral strides (around 4+ minute on the opener Breathless, Bluebird), it is then when personal dissolution and submission is complete. Lifetaker and Hopeless, Godlike may have pretenses to something akin to melodious chug, but Lords of Suicide squashes any mention of catchy tenets by permanently wading into dissonance. In that sense Brown Jenkins final hurrah can be considered as heavier and doomier Blut Aus Nord, but Burzum and Jesu also left imprints here. The voice, when it makes a rare appearance, is a bear woken up from its winter sleep.

Psychedelic and mesmerizing, Death Obsession has the tension spiral pointing downwards continuously, so there is no escape the lunacy within. And this is why I wanted to leave the quote aspect empty. The music like Death Obsession needs to be experienced at least once, if you consider yourself an independent thinker and non-conformist, but Death Obsession left such uncomfortable and flustered feeling in my mind, I really would not want to experience it again and, thus, the absence of the quote. How much you want to keep plowing these depths should be left to your own depravity. In this sense, Death Obsession reminded me of Stallagh, the albums which I criticized in these pages (you decide how unfairly). There I also had little desire to re-explore the negative emotions, but if Stallagh relied mainly on noise which I did not consider musical, Brown Jenkins’ guitar layering is something only special black metal acts can achieve. The closing march to demise, properly titled We Disappear, is a clinic in this sense. The cover art, with its ghostly “angel of death” figure staring at you while being eyeless, is the final piece of the puzzle in this nightmare.