Death Obsession is the second full-length from Austin, Texas’s Brown Jenkins. These guys play black metal only in the loosest sense of the word, creating suffocating and entrancing atmospheric music that morphs and evolves organically without any semblance of structure. There is no warmth at all in Brown Jenkins’s sound on this album; the effect is one of utter hopelessness and paranoia, like dark forces swirling around you that are beyond your control.

Like Xasthur or Blut Aus Nord, Brown Jenkins has a sound that is instantly recognizable; the fuzzy production and hypnotic, repetitive riffs and hideous vocal growls create an atmosphere that is completely unique. Main songwriter UA mixes arpeggios and some twisted melodies with shapeless and almost random-sounding guitar work, much of which repeats for a few bars before changing gradually into something else.

The tempo, which works in conjunction with the shifting guitar riffs, is the other really unique aspect of Death Obsession. Other bands will occasionally throw tempo changes into their songs, but Brown Jenkins does it constantly, gradually upping the tempo into a frenzy before slowing things down, and then jarring you with another tempo surge. Despite the changes in speed, the overall dynamics of the music are kept fairly constant, which I think adds to the disorienting effect.

The one problem with Brown Jenkins’s approach on Death Obsession is that every track sounds incredibly similar to all the others. The basic riffing style is the same, the tempo changes several times, some vocals appear here and there, and then it’s more of the same stuff in the next song. That ends up making the album really monotonous after awhile, but then perhaps it was Brown Jenkins’s intent was to barrage the listener with Death Obession’s mind-numbing atmosphere of hatred. Whether you end up liking it or not, this is definitely a disturbing album to listen to.

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