German progressive metal band Obscura have a new drummer. It was announced Wednesday (5/13) that David Diepold will be joining the band as a permanent member.
Diepold has previously worked as a drum teacher and session musician with bands such as Benighted, Hate, Belphegor and Give Em Blood. He was featured on Cognizance’s 2019 full-length debut Malignant Dominion, among his many other projects.
“Being asked to join Obscura was definitely a dream come true,” said Diepold in a statement made to the band’s social media accounts.
He continues:
“You know, I’m at a point in my musical career, where I tend to say, that the countless hours in my rehearsal room are finally starting to pay off. Especially over the last five or six years, applications from bands and musicians continuously got more professional and collaborating with those artists all helped a lot to improve my drumming skills and to grow as a musician.”
Diepold fills the position recently vacated by Sebastian Lanser, who, along with guitarist Rafael Trujillo and bassist Linus Klausenitzer, left the band in late-April due to “musical differences.” The trio announced that they would be forming a new band called Obsidious.
“I will do my absolute best to recreate Hannes’s [Grossmann, drummer previous to Lanser] and Sebastian’s parts in the context of our live performances,” says Diepold. “But most of all, I’m looking forward to write new material with such outstanding musicians.”
Frontman Steffen Kummerer is the only original member of Obscura, as the band has gone through several line-up changes in their more than 15 year career.
A week after announcing the line-up change, it was revealed that former bassist Jeroen Paul Thesseling would be returning to the band. Now that Diepold has been revealed as their new drummer, that just leaves the question of who will fill the vacant guitar spot. An announcement for that position should be made soon.
Along with Wednesday’s announcement, Diepold released a drum playthrough of Obscura’s “Vortex Omnivium” on his YouTube channel.
Obscura recently signed with Nuclear Blast and will be working on their sixth studio album at Woodshed Studios this summer. The band released their last album, Diluvium, in 2018.
