ALBUM REVIEW: O.M.E.N. – Okkultist
When underground bands dazzle with their debuts, there’s a tendency for them to throw in the towel under pressure on the follow-up. But Portugal’s OKKULTIST suffer no such struggles on O.M.E.N.. Whilst 2019’s Reinventing Evil reinvented the wheel of old-school death metal, O.M.E.N. stakes their claim for a spot in the hallowed halls of hell as the band double down on their blackened death metal tag and embellish it with the infectious melodies and swaggering groove the likes of LAMB OF GOD and HATEBREED conjure up.
Opener O.M.E.N. (Omnis Malum Et Noceo) – which translates to ‘everything is evil and harmful’ – serenades you like a siren in the silence of the night; church organs, 80s synths and droning voices bewitch you before Death To Your Breed blast beats its way out of the starting gates like a Bengal tiger set on stealing the flesh from your skin. Sure, there’s all the death metal staples sewn in, but with a newfound appreciation for melody and space; whammy solos slide you into the void amidst an onslaught of double-bass drums.
Listen to O.M.E.N. once through and you’ll be forgiven for accusing OKKULTIST of sticking to their guns. Listen to O.M.E.N. multiple times and you’ll be duly rewarded for revisiting their hellish soundscapes like sleep paralysis demons staying through the night. It’s in revisiting this record that you peel back the layers like an onion, learning that beneath its death metal skin lies an intricate body of experimentation.
Whether it’s the tolling bells that strike subtly across Blood On Satan’s Claw’s chorus, or its NWOBHM-inspired solo that shreds along a dizzying drum fill like you’re being sent flying through the void; or the defiant departure of 9th Layer Of The Abyss, where vocalist Beatriz Mariano’s death growl is so demonically guttural amongst the droning dirge of black metal that seeps through their death metal grit, haunting you as it rains out inside your ears, echoing through to your very bones like a Banshee claiming your soul; there’s so much depth here for a death metal record, you simply can’t deny the progression OKKULTIST have made as songwriters since Reinventing Evil.
OKKULTIST’s secret weapon shines out brightly across O.M.E.N.. Backed by an army of demonic warlords on fiery form – bassist David J. Rodrigues, drummer Eduardo Sinatra, and guitarists Leander Sandmeier and João Corceiro – Mariano delivers a death growl so deliriously devilish it’ll have you snapping your neck headbanging, screaming your lungs out, and slicing up angels in the pit all at once. As an album that deals headfirst with the culmination of pain, and the journey from depression to spiritual healing, you can hear every line delivered with sheer intent, a delivery often missing from modern death metal these days. And on Thy Blood, Thy Flesh, Thy Sacrifice, Mariano’s growls are so indulgently infectious and catchy you can’t help but scream along; a rarity for a genre so often awash in a wall of unintelligible sound.
On an album that often explores its genre’s depths, the band’s tribute to CHILDREN OF BODOM’s Alexi Laiho via their cover of BODOM-staple Sixpounder stays close to its source material. Whilst it’s a fitting tribute, considering how much of a trailblazer Laiho himself was, you do wonder whether it’d have been better to carve out their own caricature of the song. Elsewhere, they toy with silence, as 10-minute closer Crimson Ecstacy is actually a four-minute blast of blackened death metal that trails off into four minutes of silence before Mariano drones on in reverse – it’s a strange way of closing out an album so intense, yet doesn’t take away from it; it simply adds to the atmosphere.
In 2019, we said that OKKULTIST “still have a bit of work ahead of them in establishing their own identity.” On O.M.E.N., they’ve truly started to find their feet and have staked their claim for a seat at blackened death metal’s table of future leaders.
Rating: 9/10
O.M.E.N. is set for release on December 2nd via Alma Mater Records.
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