New Omega Infinity opus is upon us! This is their second one, out through Season of Mist. What to expect? I must admit I haven’t listened to this international two men band/project before, so I did not know how they sound like. This is basically black metal with lots of blackened death metal influences, but also sounding very raw and aggressive. Vocals are mixture of death metal growling, black metal screaming, eerie chanting voices, some whispering and almost spoken words. Music ranges from blast beat fast oriented aggression pure to more slower and atmospheric stuff like excellent ‘Iron Age’ featuring guest performance by Adrienne Cowan(Seven Spires) who provides clean vocals and screams on this one sounding just awesome. Omega Infinity cleverly mixes industrial and electronica into their song structures thus creating something cold and sinister, but also there are subtle melodies underneath all of brutality. There are also guest performances, like Lindsay Schoolcraft(ex Cradle of Filth, Antiqva) delivering her speech and screams of fantastic ‘Death Rays’ and Andras Nagy of Hungarian Sear Bliss singing on ‘Voices From The End Of Time’ and ‘Night Journey’ and Marta J. Braun (TODTGELICHTER, VYRE) delivering clean vocals of Emperor cover ‘Ye Entranceempirium’. Yes, there are two covers on this one as bonus, one being aforementioned Emperor song, on whom this band reminds me in their progressive black metal elements and variety of songwriting. Other is a Sear Bliss cover. Songs are long but they do not get boring for one second because this is various and aggressive, but also smart and progressive black metal opus.
It is always nice to hear one more band from your home country scene that you didn’t listen to before. Ochi are from Rijeka, Croatia and this is their new EP. This EP contains kind of cheerful intro turning into ominous and eerie melody with children playing and screaming and car door opening, reminding me of something sinister. Then, four songs connect into childhood stories like the title of the record says. Besides already published single ‘Dječak od vatre’ which is a mixture of post hardcore and post punk, heavy in some parts, melodic in others, three more songs deliver punch to your gut with their heaviness, darkness, but also melancholy in a way. One of my personal favorites is the title song, with that harshness mixed with atmospheric post punk parts and vocals which transform from melodic clean singing to more screamed parts and also whispering and spoken world. Guitar parts sound a bit otherworldly, taking you into some other soundscape. ‘Apnea’ is a bit grungy influenced song, at least I hear it like that in chorus which is melodic with pop sensitivity behind the heaviness. I think, this one is besides the aforementioned single the darkest song on the record. Lyrics are in Croatian, but deal with themes that are a bit darker and introspective and less happy and full of hope, quite the contrary, the whole vibe of this EP is pretty darkened and I love it for that. Have a listen and check it out! Support your scene!
I knew next to nothing about Bristol, UK’s NAUT. Well, they released their new opus with Season of Mist. What have we here? There are eight songs on this opus. To me, this band sounds like post punk, ethereal, almost spacy guitar passages and vibes, gothic influenced singing reminding me at times of Croatian band called Phantasmagoria and sometimes of Joy Division influenced playing at least this is how I heard it in ‘All The Days’. More straightforward gothic post punk is ‘Gold Death’, one of my personal favorites on this opus, I can almost hear it playing in some gothic club, yet retaining a bit of harshness beneath beautiful keyboard passages that spread throughout the opus, making it richer and more bombastic, so to say. I can not avoid hearing also pop sensitivity in songwriting gentler atmospheric passages, thus colliding them with punk legacy and hitting me as a listener straight to my heart with hits such as ‘8 In 3’ and also ‘Unity Of Opposites’. This is darkened, this is melodic, but also raw punk energy legacy lies underneath it all. Like it a lot.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 