SEEN AND HEARD: OUBLIETTE AND ZOM

I’ve been distracted over the last couple of days and haven’t kept up as well as I’d like with the appearance of new songs and videos. I have a long list, and with luck I’ll have a big Saturday catch-up post to share more of what I’ve found. For today, I want to throw you some recommended music from two bands who together have been dismantling my sanity quite effectively.

OUBLIETTE

Oubliette are a Tennessee-based melodic black metal band whose members include guitarist Mike Low of Inferi — whose latest album DGR reviewed here — and his wife Emily Low (vocals), plus bassist Vincent Jones (Æther Realm) and drummer Doug Mesich. Apart from the fact that I’m a fan of Inferi and Æther Realm, I was attracted to Oubliette after I had the chance to hear an unmastered version of a song named “Creatures of the Endless Slumber”. Yesterday the band released their debut album on Bandcamp, where the final version of that song and 7 others are now available for streaming and download.

I’m still really high on “Creatures of the Endless Slumber”, and although I’ve only started making my way through the rest of the album, it’s sounding really good, too. “Creatures” beautifully integrates sensations of the ethereal and the physically savage. The effectiveness of this combination is due in no small part to Emily Low’s remarkably versatile vocal talents, which range from ghostly clean song to bestial snarls, as well as to the juxtaposition of soft acoustic melodies with storming riff and blast assaults.

In a word, the music is gripping and memorable, and really well-produced to deliver a clean, powerful sound. Jump into this album now — I think you’ll be glad you did.

Apparitions was mixed and mastered by Zak Denham of Anagnorisis and is now available digitally at Bandcamp via the link below; CDs will become available on August 1 and can be ordered at The Artisan Era. The awesome cover art was created by Joe Lampley, with further design work by Alex Hofmann of Cypher Visual.

https://oubliette.bandcamp.com/track/creatures-of-the-endless-slumber
https://www.facebook.com/oubliettemetal

 

 

 

 

 

ZOM

New music from this next band also appeared yesterday on Bandcamp. Their name is ZOM and they’re based in Dublin, Ireland. According to Metal-Archives, they released a five-song demo in 2011 and then a two-song EP in 2013 named Multiversal Holocaust. Yesterday both the demo and an expanded version of the EP (adding one additional song) appeared on Bandcamp, and I listened to the EP last night.

I don’t know any metal heads who I would call “faint of heart”, but I’m still going to warn you that this music isn’t for the faint of heart, or for anyone with any kind of heart condition or fragile grasp on reality.

ZOM deliver a thermonuclear assault of hellish blackened death metal with grotesquely distorted guitar maelstroms and reverberating leviathan roars. But the music breaks in just the right places to shake you down with both doom-saturated crawls and physically convulsive thrash riffs. And man, the booming drum work on this EP is goddamned galvanizing.

Listening to this music is like main-lining adrenaline, setting yourself on fire, and then leaping in front of a rushing freight train. I’m in lust with ZOM.

http://zom666.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/pages/ZOM/195971213790266

 

 

 

 

xx