ALBUM REVIEW: Equations For The Useless – Oreyeon

Italian four-piece OREYEON are primed and ready to unleash their brand new third album, Equations For The Useless. Recorded almost two years ago after a stagnant lockdown in the midst of pandemic, the four-piece offer up six tracks of doom inducing stoner-rock with the odd psychedelic flair. 

First up is It Was Time; straight out of the gate its jagged and crunchy guitar riffs set the tone of the album well and do a good job of worming beneath your skin to encourage your body to move. Still though that’s just a taster of what’s to come, Pazuzu becomes much more vocal than the prior. Vocalist Richard Silvaggio lets his voice loose and gives the first real showcase of the distant vocals that sound like they part the clouds and are sung from above.

Soon after though, things get serious for the record with a ten-minute title track Equations For The Useless. This is the make or break moment for the album unfortunately, it separates the dedicated listeners from the passive ones and begs the question: would people listen to this outside of an album format? Regardless, the track opens with a calm and continuous bassline and synth sounds that spark a level of curiosity for the intro. Finally though, after two and a half minutes the absolute goliath that this track is kicks in – drums and riffs seem to emerge out of nowhere, as if a building being made were to just shoot from the ground to skyscraper heights. The familiar grunginess still exists amongst such tall sounds but gradually things start to grow tired – it quickly becomes the musical equivalent of a feature length film, especially when music begins to wade instead of keeping its incendiary energy.

All is quickly made up for in the pace department soon after, so fret not; If acquires a sort of prog-rock quality with the quickly evolving soundscape and has enough time to do it to keep things interesting. One minute things are fast and like a sprint, which is nice for an album that has marathon length tracks, the next there’s some lovely guitar flair with the technical string work. From there on out the record meets its downfall, repetitiveness.

Lacking nuance isn’t something new or unheard of by any means but in Equations For The Useless, it unfortunately starts to feel formulated and slightly unnatural. It’s not as if you won’t enjoy the first few tracks but once you’ve listened to them, you’ve already listened to the whole album. Cue grungy riff, cue distant vocals that can’t really be made out: those things are pretty nice at first but the novelty washes away quicker than you can say OREYEON. As cliché as it may be, Equations For The Useless’ greatest strengths are its biggest undoing. 

Rating: 5/10

Equations For The Useless is out now via Heavy Psych Sounds.

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