Obsequial Joy

Pop songs at college

Obsequial Joy formed in Taiwan and deliberately presented itself as a collective identity rather than a set of foregrounded individuals. Masks and theatrical objects became part of the live image, but the band explained that anonymity was intended to direct attention toward the music and to let Obsequial Joy function as an entity of its own.

The musicians’ own account begins at college, where the future members first wrote pop songs together. That origin matters because the later work did not emerge from a ready-made black-metal template. The band name likewise joins apparently opposed ideas: a funeral can signify grief and loss, but also release and a new beginning. The contrast became a useful principle for music that can remain bleak without surrendering movement or eccentricity.

In the band’s own retrospective, the beginning is deliberately ordinary: future members met at college and wrote pop songs. Obsequial Joy emerged when that shared practice turned toward darker and heavier forms. The name encodes the transition. “Obsequial” evokes funeral grief, while “joy” can describe release and a beginning after an ending. That tension is not a later critical invention; the musicians used it to explain their identity.

Five songs before one record

The musicians described beginnings that included writing pop songs before arriving at the darker language documented on the debut EP. Show My Mercy became the first substantial public statement, combining post-metal weight, funeral-doom pacing, synthesizers, samples and piano.

Grief, relief and musical contradiction

The EP works through emotional conflict: sadness is repeatedly interrupted by melodic signs of hope, while those openings never fully escape the surrounding pressure. In an interview, the band compared that tension to remaining in a terrible mire while insisting to oneself that everything is fine.

The music keeps the contradiction active. Slow doom structures and abrasive voices create weight, but melodic bass lines, post-metal expansion and moments of pop directness keep that weight moving. The band explained that bass should prevent slower passages from becoming inert. Reviews heard gothic atmosphere and black-metal abrasion in different proportions. Those descriptions are reception, while the intended kinetic role of the bass is first-person evidence.

Show My Mercy

Show My Mercy was released in 2021. Its cover and stage imagery include a chicken toy with a Joker-like head, an object the band had already brought to performances. That unusual image was not an external marketing invention; the musicians identified it as something capable of representing the music’s conflicting character.

Show My Mercy appeared on 31 March 2021 as a five-track EP lasting a little over thirty-one minutes. Reviews heard doom weight, black-metal abrasion and melodic or playful bass movement in the same material. The musicians explained that the bass was meant to keep the slower passages from becoming inert. The clown-like visual figure and deliberately withheld individual identities likewise direct attention toward the work as a collective construction.

Show My Mercy was released on 31 March 2021 as five tracks lasting a little over thirty-one minutes. Its samples and childlike sounds open a record concerned with mercy, regret and the return of consequences. The clown figure, masks and withheld personal identities keep attention on the collective image. The chronicle does not identify anonymous members by inference, even where public databases connect known musicians to other Taiwanese bands.

A Taiwanese EP on an Austrian label

Talheim Records Germany released Show My Mercy on 31 March 2021 as TRG003CD. The available interview includes a direct acknowledgement of Talheim Records, providing unusually clear documentation of the relationship around the debut EP.

After Show My Mercy

Public sources after Show My Mercy are limited.