Orden Ogan: Anthems To The Darkside
The backstory to the new ORDEN OGAN album sounds like the plot to a Stephen Spielberg movie. The band are veterans of the European power metal scene with a glowing back catalogue and attract critical acclaim wherever they go. But when the time came to craft the follow-up to Final Days, their phenomenal 2021 release, they were stumped. They had some ideas and could still write individual tracks, but the overall tone of the album just wasn’t coming to them.
Then they reached out to a fan and everything clicked. Frontman Sebastian ‘Seeb’ Levermann happened across a hardcore fan from Uruguay named Ignacio Santiago Pinto Araujo, who liked to upload covers of ORDEN OGAN songs online. Ignacio didn’t play them totally straight and would always put his own spin on things, and impressed by his abilities, Seeb figured he’d get in touch.
“He decided to just write to this guy, describe to him what we were looking for and see if he is able to come up with a few things. He was a bit starstruck at first,” recalls guitarist Niels Löffler. “But then he delivered a lot of ideas, and some of them turned into songs, but what that did is help us find the path. That brought the whole process of writing this album forward by a lot.”
Collaborating with your favourite band sounds like a dream come true and has resulted in Ignacio getting a credit on The Order Of Fear, their new self-titled record (it’s the English translation of ‘ORDEN OGAN’). It’s another stellar addition to their discography and it migt be their most aggressive yet.
“I would describe it as a more raw and in-your-face version of ORDEN OGAN, a little bit more back to the roots in a way,” explains Niels. “We were looking at everything that we’ve done so far, but in a more direct, stripped down kind of way.”
“Raw” is the key word here. The Order Of Fear finds them trimming a lot of the excess and focusing on warp speed guitars, irresistible choruses and some of the catchiest power metal anthems this side of a POWERWOLF album. Only two of the songs break the five-minute mark and these are right at the end of the record. The band has a very firm grasp of how to mix up the dynamics and no two tracks sound the same, but the songwriting is laser-focused and there’s less of the orchestral work this time around.
First track Kings Of The Underworld opens with a blaze of fast riffs, hyperactive drums and frontman Sebastian ‘Seeb’ Levermann singing at full pelt. It gets to the chorus very quickly and has melodies that are only outdone by the following title track. The Order Of Fear is precision-crafted and unbelievably catchy, and a textbook example of what ORDEN OGAN are capable of.
They maintain the quality for the rest of the album too, with songs like Conquest and Blind Man seemingly destined to become fan favourites. They’re also a couple of shades darker than the crowd-pleasing previous record. Final Days ended with mankind being exterminated, but this one manages to outdo it.
It does so by telling a more personal narrative, focused on the character of Alistair Vale. Originally designed to be a band mascot akin to IRON MAIDEN’s Eddie, he’s since taken on a life of his own. In fact, they’ve recently revealed that the past few albums have secretly been telling Vale’s story and it’s been hiding in plain sight. But while we’d love to reveal that this was the plan from day one, Niels soon dismisses it.
“I would like to say that it’s all planned out, and that there’s a very big story behind it, but it’s not exactly like that. We noticed that we can place Alistair in a lot of different backgrounds. We put him in a sci-fi setting, we put him in a western setting and the lore kind of developed over time. It’s not like a super grand scheme that we always had for this character. It evolved.”
In the course of The Order Of Fear, Vale really gets put through the ringer. He’s manipulated by a sinister cult into decapitating his best friend, an act that he thinks will end a curse but in fact makes it much worse. Adding to the problem is that it also unleashes a demon. That might sound like a far-fetched plot, but there is some basis in reality. The concept of secret societies controlling the world from behind the scenes will resonate with anyone that distrusts their political leaders and feels like a powerless cog in a machine. Niels doesn’t subscribe to any conspiracy theories that we’re aware of, but as he succinctly puts it:
“People with great power get corrupted, and people that want to do good get taken advantage of. Those things happen every day.”
That might seem like an unusual thing for a power metal musician to say, especially given the genre cliches of heroism, optimism and cheese. But while ORDEN OGAN do offer a degree of escapism, they’re happy to sail into darker waters. Besides, he doesn’t consider them a “proper” power metal band anyway:
“I never really thought that we are a power metal band in a ‘true way’, you know? I mean, we’ve got a lot of the things like very melodic choruses, and so on, but to me it never felt like power metal. Seeb is a very special singer, he’s not like this super high, shrieking voice, or whatever. Plus, if you strip away all the melodies and a lot of the production and orchestral stuff, if you listen to the riffs, it’s just really hard guitar music.”
The Order Of Fear is out now via Reigning Phoenix Music.
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