(Andy Synn dives deep into the new Oceans of Slumber album, out next week)
It is, quite frankly, borderline criminal that we haven’t all helped make Oceans of Slumber a bigger commercial and critical success.
Sure, the group has had issues with maintaining a consistent line-up, and they’ve yet to create an absolute classic that’s consistently awesome all the way through, but the highlights of their back-catalogue – combining the always stunning vocals of Cammie Beverly and the punishing percussive power of her husband Dobber with a visceral and vibrant variety of progressive riffs, cinematic synths, and lithe, limber bass-lines – have always, in my opinion at least, outnumbered their occasional musical missteps.
Hell, the gloomy Southern Gothic glamour of 2022’s Starlight & Ash could – and should – have led to some serious mainstream crossover success… but somehow the band still didn’t get their due.
Well, it now looks like all that rejection (ok, it’s not like the group are total unknowns by any means, they just have yet to receive the push they properly deserve) has come home to roost as, for better or worse (but mostly for better), it’s clear that Where Gods Fear to Speak is the sort of album that was written solely for the band’s own enjoyment and artistic fulfilment.
Now, let me be clear about something right from the start… despite what you may hear or read elsewhere, Where Gods Fear to Speak is not the band’s best album (that accolade still, in my opinion, belongs to the group’s 2020 self-titled record which, although suffering from some excessive bloat, is absolutely stacked with highlights) but it is, for the most part, a very good album which – at its very best – serves as yet another reminder as to why they deserve so much more.
And even at its “worst” (a relative term) the handful of criticisms I do have – namely that a) their excess of ambition, leading them to sometimes try and be and do ten different things at once, means some of their songs can end up feeling a little disjointed (with both the opening title-track and “Poem of Ecstasy”, for all their impressive technicality and proggy complexity, somehow adding up to less than the sum of their parts), and b) their insistence on always including a cover track (in this case a rather predictable acoustic rendition of Chris Isaak‘s “Wicked Game”) rarely ends up doing more than distracting from their own far superior original material – aren’t exactly new and will probably already be familiar to most long-term fans of the band.
Said original material is, however, often at its best when it’s at its most focussed, with the doomy dynamism and melodic melodrama of “Wish” (which reminds me of an even more captivating version of Paradise Lost at their catchiest) and the brooding electro-pulse of “The Given Dream” (whose simmering slow-burn builds to a powerful, cathartic crescendo) both feeling greater and more grandiose in both scope and scale than their surprisingly succinct run-times might suggest.
That being said, these aren’t the only highlights on the album, with the epic eight-and-a-half minute odyssey of “Don’t Come Back From Hell Empty Handed” (which probably should have been the album opener) and soul-stirring Prog-Metal anthem “I Will Break the Pride of Your Will” also ranking right up their with the band’s best work, each track showcasing just how good Oceans of Slumber can be when all their varied elements – the intricate yet intense guitar and drum work (the latter capable of displaying both moody restraint and merciless ferocity, as the occasion demands), the soaring vocals and subtle keys, the gloomy acoustic embellishments and doomy atmospheric ingredients – are all aligned and arranged organically in the same direction.
It’s probably also worth pointing out, just so you can set your expectations properly, that the much-hyped debut of Cammie Beverley’s harsh vocals ends up making far less of an overall impression than the advance materials may have suggested – she’s certainly got a meaty, guttural growl, that’s for sure, but it’s definitely not on the same level (yet) as her phenomenal, and instantly recognisable singing voice – and that, of the two guest features (Moonspell‘s Fernando Ribeiro making a suitably aggressive appearance on seething second track “Run From the Light” and Dark Tranquillity‘s Mikael Stanne lending his signature snarl and characteristic croon to the heavy-yet-haunting “Prayer”) it’s the latter track which comes off best, both due to the song’s tighter flow and the more natural interplay between Stanne and Beverley behind their respective mics.
You may also have noticed, if you’ve been paying attention, that I’ve reserved most of my praise for the album’s second half, as the last four tracks in particular (not counting the aforementioned cover which… ’nuff said about that) collectively make for one hell of a run in their own right, with the vivid, cinematic, wide-screen vision of phenomenal final track “The Impermanence of Fate” helping put the icing on this particular cake in a way which (mostly) makes up for the record’s occasional flaws and failings over the preceding fifty-ish minutes.
Now, I know some of you are probably going to be a little disappointed that I didn’t just blindly heap praise on this album – though I definitely feel like I’ve given credit where credit is due, as there are absolutely some truly outstanding songs to be found here – but my hope is that, ultimately, what you’re going to take away from this review is a fair and (hopefully) balanced impression of an album by a band who still have the potential to become an even bigger name… even if the full extent of what they’re truly capable of (what I believe they’re truly capable of, anyway) still remains, for now at least, just out of reach.