(I originally wrote this review as a guest piece for Metal Bandcamp and am re-posting it here, just in case Metal Bandcamp collapses under the weight of all the words.)

When MaxR asked me to write a guest review for Metal Bandcamp, he said he wanted to give me something a little out of my usual comfort zone, and specifically, something connected to the realm of doom. When I agreed, the album he picked was A Beautiful Dystopia, released earlier this year by Okera from Melbourne, Australia. I’m afraid Max failed in his mission. Not only am I comfortable in the company of A Beautiful Dystopia, I’m ready to marry it and have kids.

As a genre term, “doom” is a big tent, encompassing a wide range of music, particularly when it’s joined through a hyphen with other styles of metal. A Beautiful Dystopia is one of those hybrids. All of the music is wrapped in the blanket of night, moving in an atmosphere that is often suffused with sensations of melancholy or even the energized bleakness of agony. But the music is also heavy and compulsively rhythmic at the same time as it’s wonderfully melodic. To varying degrees, depending on the song, Okera meld together melodic death metal and doom to produce dramatic, memorable songs.

Every one of the sevens tracks share certain hallmarks: Most of them are long, with three of them lasting more than nine minutes and three others ranging between almost seven minutes and eight — which means they depend on changes in pacing and intensity. Okera establish core melodic themes and then weave them through a course that drops and rises, with soft, contemplative, occasionally acoustic passages and sudden enormous crashes of might and power. The music ebbs and flows, and ultimately the songs build toward an almost overpowering surge of emotion. Continue reading »