Emanations

for any highly poisonous snake from the Australian latitudes… one that can even kill Judge Dred, preferably. But even if my hunting spree doesn’t produce the desired results, I’m pretty sure that our favourite Judge will come close to the state of fainting at least once exposed to the album reviewed here…

cause there are very few classic tech-thrash exploits from the guys’ earliest period when they were known as Dred, and consequently there’s little on display to bind this recording to its glorified predecessor, the Ouroboros debut that is. Well, it all comes to aberrations and deviance, and looking askance and away from the main occupation: some of these graduates from the Dred school joined forces, shortly after the release of Ouroboros’ first, and decided to found another entity, Sorathian Dawn, with whom they wanted to vent their passion for the operatic, also atmospheric, death/black metal hybrid (self-titled, released 2012). Not a bad decision by any means, but once said hybrid has been brought into the Ouroboros kitchen threatening to overwrite their initially chosen style, then it can be viewed as little else but a distraction from the loftier musicality witnessed earlier.

The ingenious choppy staccato rhythms from the first instalment try to stand their ground initially, on the nervy jumpy “Scion”, but once the warm keyboard-induced vistas from “The Sleep of Reason” enter the scene, it doesn’t take very long for the whole setting to turn into one baroque gothic, deeply atmospheric melodrama along the lines of the Greeks Septicflesh and Nightfall (the mid-period), and more recent Melechesh… strange provided that the Greek connection in the band’s line-up, the guitar virtuoso Denis Vlachiotis that is, departed even before the Ouroboros project had commenced... anyway, the situation is saved by the short nervy shredders (“Horizons”, Submission”), seeming qualifiers for the first coming, that fight their way through melodic sketches, operatic arrangements, balladic digressions, Oriental etudes, and these omnipresent keyboards which on “Beneath Heaven's Waves” are literally soul-rending. There’s a lot of music thrown at the listener, no doubt about that, even compendiums like the 9-min long saga “The Amber Light” that try to make a compromise and put the two currents together into one melting pot, but the cold precise riffage there is just an atmosphere dissipator, not serving the guys’ new purpose except as a reminder of past exploits, and also to keep the thrash connection in check…

cause this isn’t really thrash; but it’s not exactly death metal, either, save for the intimidating vocals. This is dark atmospheric metal with clear operatic and progressive pretensions, a moody offering that holds no fascination for clinical technical rifforamas anymore; music that would invariably attract the relevant crowd and might even enchant some. It won’t be exceedingly hard to recognize the creators of the previous “glorified myth”, but it’s quite clear that a new path has been started, one that may lead the way out of any contrived, retro metal trips in the years to come… a path that would surely see the serpent shed its skin, but would hardly witness its miraculous transition into a dragon.

Both Ouroboros and Sorathian Dawn are active at the moment, and there’s no merger of the two enterprises scheduled in the foreseeable future… good. Hey, I even heard the other day that our beloved Judge Dred is bracing himself for a new temptation... nah, that last one is not even an uneducated guess; although I’m quite certain there would be more than just a couple of candidates to enrol his famed school of hygienic technical, shredding thought.