I really can’t believe how I missed this band and not listening to their opus until now. Ne Obliviscaris released their fourth full length opus finally, after all the trouble with pandemia and shit around the world which delayed recording and production of this beauty. This one contains six songs, which are longer in duration but in no way boring for one second. Music is for me a mixture of progressive metal and melodic death doom metal with violin adding to sombre and melancholic touch of the whole atmosphere. I love the interplay between Tim Charles’ clean vocals rich with melody and growls of other vocalist Xenoyr. I love the concept of ‘Misericorde I’ and ‘Misericorde II’ a kind of heart of this album, at least for me. Lyrics deal with death, decay, grief as doom themes and battles and mythological stories as part of more prog, even power metal backgrounds in some songs. Anyway, this album is the one you should listen as a whole and not in parts, because only then you will understand the grandeur behind it and how beautiful metal music can take you somewhere else.
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.
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 