Saturday, April 07, 2018

Dragged Under Waves...

Ommadon - End Times (2018)


With their latest album, the Scottish duo of Ommadon deliver about forty minutes of concentrated doom, split into two parts for vinyl formatting. If you've heard the band's work before, you'll have a general idea of what to expect this time around, but if you're new to Ommadon, buckle in for some crushing heaviness that takes its time hoisting the slabs of its tunes into place.
Part one of End Times grinds its way up that hill with steady deliberation, threading in further layers of oppressive atmosphere every few minutes or so, and it's a good fourteen minutes before the vocals make their first craggy entrance. The morass of bass vibrations and superb under-textures is something which just can't be done justice with second-hand description; you've got to load this into your stereo and soak up all those bad vibrations yourself to appreciate the uncanny creepiness, depression, anger, and hunger that fill the experience.
The second half rumbles on in much the same way, with a short pause in the activities marking the point at which physical copies will need to be flipped. While there's just as much variance to this portion as the first, the guitar does seem to be more prominent in part B, giving things a sharper edge at points, while the waves of bass reverb gnaw away at the edge of feeling. It's big, it swings for the skull, it beats. Heavy music fans, get in and hold on.
~ Gabriel

For Fans Of; Bell Witch, Bongripper, first-era Godflesh, Skullflower, Ufomammut


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