Here I review the brand new EP of OPPRESS, a UK Black Metal project featuring some incredibly dissonant songwriting and eclectic ideas that culminate in a 3 track EP for those with a penchant for the disturbing arts and macabre.
With a barrage of grisly riffs and slowly build in drums, sampling included, the EP opens with a marching fury and drawn out disparity that truly demands your attention, with fans of Deathspell Omega certainly hooked from the off. Bleak avant-garde instrumentals, whispers and pained snarls will certainly active the schizoid noise-scapes innermost fierceness with a pummelling groove to follow. There is some nice doomy texturing within the music that adds a fantastic diversity to the eerie deliverance. This one man project certainly starts out in total style with an awesome experimental approach to things, a true conjuration of filth. The EP goes on in a similar fashion with vibrant discordance and echoing snarls, spaced out to make for a tension-packed and exciting release that is unhinging and furiously menacing, a monolith of violently delightful indulgence with some gorgeously concocted atmospherics. For me the vocals work as the most intimidating part, though the consistently blasting drums add a lot to the storming barrage of the music. Finally the guitars have some very noteworthy riffs crafted for the horrific assault that mix dungeon-dwelling ambience with penetrative and intrusive dissonance, sometime also giving a thrashy bite to the mix. Overall I think while niche, this is a brilliantly written EP for those into stuff like Lurker Of Chalice and the aforementioned Deathspell Omega. There is of course room to work with the songs sounding slightly detached in parts which may well be intentional but can make for an uneven transference. That being said I think it is a small criticism among some amazing musicianship that certainly overall won my favour. Certainly a band to keep an eye out for and a hidden gem in the booming UK scene. -7/10
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