DEATHSPELL OMEGA
Drought Review + Stream

The French Black Metal institution DEATHSPELL OMEGA is a league of its own. Although the attribution to the genre is undoubted, there is no band that is able express its musical visions like DSO does. And it’s not just the excessive use of odd time signatures, weird chord progressions and an overall progressive song writing. Bands like Blut aus Nord or maybe Ulcerate (the latter of course existing within the Death Metal context) avail themselves of similar techniques. But there is hardly any band on this planet that is able to merge musical excellence, an extremely aggressive sound, a deep philosophic, anti-cosmic superstructure and a high grade of mystification like DSO. With their newest output Drought, they prove this once more and leave you like a bloody, worthless wreck.

DSO keep wandering the path they pursued with Paracletus in 2010. The brutal, hectic blast-beaten onslaught is sometimes interrupted by calmer – you could even say melodic – passages. This interplay is highly effective, since it creates a very balanced atmosphere, which is very fetching and leaves you no other chance but keep listening. Of course, when DSO start to cause havoc, there’s nothing left but ashes. In their heavy, furious moments DSO are unmatched – it sounds as if they let mountains crumble and crack skies open to unleash the beast of the apocalypse – just because they can. Really, really outstanding.

Full review + stream after the jump!

I could imagine some people might be irked by the fact that Drought only delivers six songs and due to this isn’t really a very long record – it clocks in at about 22 minutes. But lets face reality: You have a serious chance of really getting into those 22 minutes, and perceive what’s going on within them, which is a lot. It is way harder to accomplish this within a proper DSO full-length, and so Draught is a lot more accessible (if one can even use this word here). This is a more than felicitous teaser for further things to come – I can’t wait.