"You have to create yourself a new language": Gorguts' 'Obscura' at 20

 

It was well received, but it was a very small audience. It took a while. And people were like, 'What the fuck is this?' Now, when I say 'Obscura,' everybody has their fist in the air, it’s like, 'Yeah, bring it on!' [laughs]. It's time, you know? It just happens with time. The sound was able to find its right place. —Gorguts' Luc Lemay on the band's 1998 album Obscura

It just keeps coming back to Obscura. During the past 10/15 years, as I've moved through interlocking communities of forward-thinking New York musicians (metal, jazz and beyond), both as a writer and as a player, the third album by Quebecois death-metal band Gorguts — released 20 years ago today — has become sort of gold standard for stubborn individuality, for the idea of placing absolute trust in one's muse, even if it leads you to a place of what seems at first like pure insanity.

As Lemay explains in the above interview with Metal Assault (well worth your time in full), the album came about through a process of sort of forced experimentation, with the band deliberately walling itself off from its trusty methods of writing and composing.

['Obscura'] came about because we made a very clear decision, everybody together. The three writers in the band [Lemay, his late fellow guitarist/vocalist "Big" Steeve Hurdle and bassist Steve Cloutier], of course the drummer included, Steve MacDonald, was writing with us in the arrangement department and everything. [Note: MacDonald helped compose 'Obscura,' but it was actually Patrick Robert who played drums on the album.] But the thing is, we did some kind of [manifesto] together. This was right after 'Erosion' [a.k.a. the band's more-conventional 1993 album 'The Erosion of Sanity'], so we said okay, writing a new record: no fast-picking riff is going to be accepted in the music, no scat beat, which ‘Erosion’ is all about. So none of those mentioned were going to be allowed, everything else, but none of those other ones. And then we’ll start from there, and see what happens. The band also decided to do both vocals as well, so those were the main lines.

I believe no tremolo picking as well, as you mentioned in an interview a long time ago.

Exactly! Good point, that was another one.

Why were those ‘limits’ set in place?
Because, if you stay in your comfort zone, it takes forever just to incorporate a new thing in your sound. But if you force yourself not to use everything that you’re comfortable with, then you have to create yourself a new language that you’re happy with. So it forces you to explore, to touch the instrument differently, and approach the music differently as well, to get new sounds out of it.

The results speak for themselves. The album is so perverse, so chaotic and discordant, yet at the same time so logical and deliberate within the parameters it sets for itself, that it achieves sort of strange counter-intuitive serenity.


This is in some ways an ascetic sound, the product of walling one's self off from the world outside and creating a new, insular one within. But it's also the sound of pure, unfettered discovery, of a kind of seething, ecstatic creativity. (During an intense period of Gorguts immersion, I once described the record as "...one of the most pungently progressive albums ever made, in or out of metal. Obscura didn't just register as technical; it sounded downright excruciating, as if its shuddering blastbeats, doleful bellows, and deliriously inventive guitarwork were being torn straight from the chests of its makers.")

As fans know, Gorguts are in the midst of a glorious renaissance, which kicked off with 2013's outstanding Colored Sands and continued with 2016's equally impressive Pleiades' Dust. The gradually snowballing influence of Obscura helped set the stage for this moment, when one of extreme metal's most challenging bands could also be one of its most beloved.

In honor of 20 years of Obscura, here are a few thoughts on the record drawn from interviews in my Heavy Metal Bebop series, which began as the result of seeing pianist Craig Taborn (who would eventually meet and collaborate with Steeve Hurdle) at a Gorguts show.

Ben Monder (2017)

How would you describe what's happening on Obscura? I'm not a guitar player, so I can't necessarily verbalize it?

It's not about guitar at all. There's nothing really virtuosic on that. It's just like, there are sounds that he was getting — I don't know technically what you would even call it, like pick-scraping type things. I had never heard that before. It was more about the mystery of what was happening. I had never heard those elements put together in that way before. You know, when you first heard a record like that, you just don't know what's going on; there are all these novel ideas swimming around and colliding. And it almost seems like it shouldn't even work, but it's perfect. And it's also very integrated. It doesn't sound clever or contrived; it sounds like this integrated language that is just natural, but it's the result of all these technical elements. I like that aspect in music where it's mysterious and sounds correct and yet you have no idea how or why it works. And of course it has the darkness, and it's got "Earthly Love" with the violin. Where else is a death-metal song going to have a prominent violin feature that sounds perfect, you know? That's one of my top five metal records.

Matt Mitchell (2016)

Man, Obscura came on the other day. I've had that album for almost 20 years, since it came out, and it struck me how totally [crazy] that album is. It's so bizarre. [Laughs] It's really out there, man. And I basically live off of weird music, and that's, like, still... even in metal, there's nothing that quite goes that far.

Craig Taborn (2011)

There are a few metal albums that really intrigue me, and Obscura was one because it kind of came out of nowhere for me. That was such a weird little blip when it came out. Nobody knew what it was. It was too out. A lot of metal guys hated it. It was all wrong. The doom thing wasn’t big, and it had these things that were super-slow, and everybody hated that. Not everybody – obviously people liked it. But it was so dissonant and so dense; it was like Beefheart-metal.

Dan Weiss and I also talked about Gorguts extensively, during the first HMB interview back in 2011. He has some fascinating things to say about the drumming on the band's masterful fourth album From Wisdom to Hate.

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I'd like to thank Chuck Stern, Tim Byrnes and Colin Marston (now a member of Gorguts!), fellow travelers in the NYC scene, for introducing me to Obscura sometime in the early 2000s. I had heard The Erosion of Sanity in the '90s, but it didn't really stick. When I caught up and heard how completely the band had transformed itself, I was stunned and amazed.

Goodbye, Big Steeve

In the midst of Deathfest insanity, there was no time to report that the death-metal community lost a beloved innovator a few days ago: Mr. Steeve Hurdle, best known for his work in Quebec's Gorguts (specifically, on the awe-inspiring 1998 album Obscura) and in the spin-off project Negativa. My sincere condolences to his family and friends.

Despite all the amazing work he did during his lifetime (see above; that's Hurdle on the right, playing guitar and singing lead—in that inimitable anguished, sobbing style of his—throughout most of the song; the footage was posted by Hurdle himself, in tribute to Gorguts' then-drummer, Steve MacDonald, who had committed suicide in 2002), I can't help but think of a missed opportunity when I think of Big Steeve, as he was known. A little over two years ago, Steeve was scheduled to perform at the Stone in NYC, both solo and in a duo with Craig Taborn, but he was turned away at the border and the gigs never happened. I'll never forget how bummed I was when I heard the news. I was worried then that I'd never get to see Hurdle perform live (I got into Gorguts only well after he'd left the band and, as far as I know, Negativa never played in the U.S.), and it turned out to be true.

When I had the opportunity to sit down with Craig Taborn last year, I grilled him incessantly about his experiences working with Steeve. The two had met on MySpace, of all "places," and connected in person when Taborn played Montreal with David Binney in the mid-aughts; then Toby Driver of Kayo Dot booked the NYC Hurdle gigs, and Taborn visited Hurdle the week before the show was scheduled to occur. At that point, the two jammed. Taborn described the session to me in an e-mail:

"Steeve and I did not record that day, unfortunately; at the time, we were expecting to play the next week in NYC and I knew that would be recorded. It was fun, though, playing with him, especially [once] we got past the idea that i was a 'jazz' guy and so certain things had to happen a certain way. We fused immediately, maybe more because his way of playing sounded so comfortable to me, because I have really listened to those recordings for hours on end and learned everything, so it felt very home-like to me."

Of Steeve's work with Gorguts, Taborn said:

"Obscura really turned my head around about a lot of things compositionally and in terms of sound. Really a groundbreaking album and still full of secrets for me."

I corresponded briefly with Steeve himself after the Stone cancellation. I couldn't help asking him what he had been planned for his two sets. This was his reply:

From: Steeve Hurdle

Date: February 20, 2010 3:48:12 AM EST

To: Hank Shteamer

Subject: RE: sorry to hear about cancellation

Hello Hank,
sorry about the delay man...


What did i have planned for the stone concert was, an improvisation with Craig, we actually met the week before as Craig had a concert in Ottawa and the day after he just drive to montreal, to my rehearsal place and we had that really good improvised jam together.As for my solo set, i wanted to play the NEGATIVA album, all the songs that are gonna be on our first CD.....Unfortunately, this gonna be for another time...:S


I knew Craig from the internet, we've been writing to each other for the last 4 years.The first time i met him, he was playing, along with Dan Weiss in the David Binney band, back in 2007.


 As you said, Craig is a unique musician,lots of respect for him!


Thanks for writing and hopefully we will have the chance to meet one day...


Steeve

I remember feeling so disappointed and tantalized re: the NYC Hurdle show that never was. Now, it's hard to feel anything but sadness.

Steeve Hurdle's body of work is small but timeless. (It really just comes down to Obscura, an incredible three-song Negativa EP, some live material and early work with the band Purulence; speaking of the latter, anyone know if Hurdle appears in this clip? Hard to tell…) I have no doubt that open-minded listeners will continue to discover it and marvel at it. Hurdle showed me a new frontier in metal, something feverish, hallucinatory, terrifying at times, soul-plumbing, mercilessly extreme. Listening to, say, the excruciatingly drawn-out prog-doom dirge "Clouded" from Obscura (a track on which Hurdle was the sole composer; on much of the album, he collaborated with bandmates Luc Lemay and Steve Cloutier), you could tell that this was an artist who was going to keep pushing and pushing, whether anyone followed him or not. The grotesque array of squiggles, scrapes and squeals that made up Hurdle and Lemay's guitar vocabulary on Obscura and beyond—one of the most insular, unmistakable musical languages I've ever heard— screamed the message that metal was a limitless form of expression.

Whatever I could write here pales next to what you'll see and hear in the Negativa clip below. (Big Steeve is the first person that shows up in the vid, jokingly requesting that the viewer "Be quiet" when entering the studio; he's also the one starting off the song with the insane fretboard tapping.) Innovative technique in the service of unfettered imagination; from-scratch invention of form and content; willing something into being that has never before existed. There is no higher achievement. Genre is irrelevant here. It's simply creativity, and Steeve Hurdle was a master creator. Let us honor his memory.

P.S. Go here for some info on Hurdle's life outside of music.
P.P.S. Invisible Oranges has posted a moving Hurdle tribute by Doug Moore of the band Pyrrhon.

Canceled? Check

Bummed, bummed, bummed. Steeve Hurdle—see previous post—has canceled his Stone appearances for tonight and tomorrow. That makes two for two, re: 2010 shows I was looking forward to like Christmas morning (Hanukkah night, technically), and which I previewed in TONY, only to have them called off. Lest I curse another gig, I do hereby (mock-)promise not to go out of my way to prepublicize the next NYC show I'm dying to see. In the meantime, ALL and Steeve Hurdle, please reschedule soon!

O Canada

Not unusually, I have Canadian music on the brain. Thinking about the marvelous spectrum. This evening I reveled in "Last of the Blacksmiths" and "Sleeping," and read up on the upcoming Rush documentary (codirected Sam Dunn, the man responsible for the oustandingly diverse Metal: A Headbanger's Journey). Topped it all off by indulging my current obsession with the joint work of Luc Lemay and Steeve Hurdle, the latter of whom is (I seriously can't wait) headed NYC-ward in a week's time. Feel it: