Kingdom

As cliché as it might sound, Oceanwake is a band that would deserve quite a bit of wider attention. The post-metal scene of Finland has produced such internationally semi-recognizable bands as Ghost Brigade and Callisto, and with a bit of luck and some marketing effort, Oceanwake might well have ended up in the same category of bands that people deeply interested in that specific niche might casually mention even abroad.

What Oceanwake did in 2013 on Kingdom is, fundamentally, rather basic post-metal. It reminds the listener of the likes of Cult of Luna, The Ocean, Ghost Brigade, Isis, and a bunch of others, at least in various eras of their respective careers. But unlike most of the greats of the post-metal crowd, Oceanwake approaches the same sound from a different direction: there's little of the usual post-sludge foundation in the music. Instead, the sound on Kingdom has been derived and developed further from the atmospheric doom/death metal that Finland seemed to produce in abundance a few years ago, and still does. Essentially, if you could imagine yourself fancying a lucid post-metal version of Hanging Garden or Colosseum, you're in for a treat: this is the post-metalized version of that specific brand of doom/death, and it works like a charm. Most of the time the music treads softly, but occasionally slips into parts that crush the listener with brief heavy parts, supported by very convincing growls. And those growls, too, are of the doom/death variant, not sludgy screeching. On parts of the album, the softening of the music has gone further than where the post-sludge cousins of Oceanwake have ventured, and the cleanest and most melodic parts, with their guitars with feathery light touches, are already treading paths outside the realm of metal. But when Oceanwake plays metal, it certainly has heavy things to say.

The growls are just the tip of the iceberg, as far as the technical performance goes. The guitars are singing softly atop a delightfully palpable bass-heavy base, the tempo is relaxing and slowish, and instead of the monotonous, hypnotic and repetitive character of certain albums of the genre, Kingdom develops and changes throughout its entire length, and even the songs wander from somewhere to somewhere else. While the music lacks abundant funky time signatures and massive technical wankery-wizardy, the songs are like walks from one place to another, and full of gradually changing beauty; it would not be wrong to call them progressive, in the old sense of the word, since they, well, progress. And the production is perfect, with weight and crunch where needed, and finesse when necessary.

The band claims to play "arctic experimental metal", but considering that they reside in Luvia, definitely a part of the temperate zone, and actually experiment very little outside the established post-metal comfort zone, the contrived and pompous genre definition may simply be by-passed and immediately forgotten by anyone actually interested in the music: this is extremely well-made and atmospheric post-metal with a doom/death body, and that's pretty much it. Kingdom is easy to listen to but has depth in its songwriting, and it has been executed well enough to compete for a position as the next band of the broader genre worth mentioning from Finland. It will be very interesting to hear what their upcoming full-length, Sunless, holds in its depths.

Based on the contents of Kingdom and a recent live performance, it might indeed be awesome.