Obsesi Mati

The Indonesian metalheads have been known as true fanatics of death metal, whether they be elitists or poseurs. Some (usually only few, but quite (or even extremely) famous among the other) of the bands have even been an object of controversy because of the extreme themes they embrace (even until now). Forgotten are just one of them.

And among the albums released by Forgotten, "Obsesi Mati" (Indonesian for "Obsession of Death") is just one of the albums tending to be controversial. Their uses of sarcastic words, swears and obscene words can always be heard in every track, but none of them are pointless enough to say (which only have one purpose, to criticize the polemical sociopolitical life in Indonesia). Also, their composition and songwriting are good and emotional enough, showing their influences from old school death metal bands (like Malevolent Creation and Cryptopsy) and thrash metal bands (like Slayer and Metallica), for example, "Perkosa R.I." ("Rape the Republic of Indonesia"), "Terlaknat" ("Accursed", one of Forgotten's early songs to start adding more controversial lyrical themes like occultism, blasphemy, and Satanism, though the "extreme" lyrical themes are only meant to add controversy), and so on.

The album's main theme is death, so it is just not necessary that we forgot to speak about "Obsesi Mati" (actually sharing the same place with "Balangsak", both also my favorite tracks). It is truly sarcastic as it tells about one's obsession of death. However, if you're bored with this kind of sarcasm, you can listen to "Sarkasme", which tells of a jerk (described as the first person pronoun) that asks people around him to "fuck off" before he "kicks them out".

After the listeners seem to be bored by Forgotten's sarcastic and emotional tracks, Forgotten put out their own cover of Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water". The cover of the legendary song is played with their own style, possibly one of few death n' roll samples before The Cumshots, the Norwegian band, released their debut album, "Last Sons of Evil". However, their play cannot really be considered death n' roll, as they only retain the hard rock feeling a little bit enough. Oh, also and last but not least, the Addy "Gembel" (the vocalist) just manages to be one of few death metal vocalists that scream instead of growling gutturally.