Oubliette Ontology

My initial reaction to this album was very simple: “I don’t think I want to listen to this.” The music was and is something I don’t quite understand. I mean, I appreciate old school technical death metal greatly, but this one is just too oppressive and strange, almost like I don’t even know what I’m listening to. Still, I find myself returning to ‘Oubliette Ontology’ every now and then hoping I’ll be able to get it this time. A good thing, too, since each new listen reveals more from the album and makes me like it more.

I only need to mention Demilich, and you will already have an idea of what this sounds like. Not only strictly musically speaking, but in terms of the all-important “feel” as well (otherwise other names could be dropped too). However, we’re certainly not dealing with a xerox copy even if the basic formula is similar; Pyuria is even less predictable (you better believe it!), eager to throw in completely off-the-wall bursts of sound and riffs that have seemingly nothing whatsoever to do with each other. This alone is enough to make their music hard to follow and challenging to listen to – in comparison, even Demilich really is relatively straightforward. They are also more versatile in style, as the music ranges from insanely technical guitar runs to slow, crushing, simple riffs and from odd-meter atonality to warped rock grooves. The most “difficult” aspect of all this is without a doubt the rhythms in general; while polyrhythmic parts are rather commonplace in metal nowadays, Pyuria sounds more like non-rhythmic at times, in particular if one tries to keep track of how exactly do the guitar and drums work together. The vocalist also follows no foreseeable patterns in his barking, making things all the more confusing.

The album clocks in at just about exactly 30 minutes and has no more than six tracks on it (not counting an intro and outro); a sad fact because at least for me, the first two are always needed to get used to the band’s sound. There are no huge differences between individual songs – the aforementioned versatility having more to do with song parts – but some details are still worth a mention. ‘Wound Opening Pt.2’ features an almost bluesy instrumental part that’s even labelled “rokkikohta” (Finnish for “rock part”) in the CD’s booklet and is literally sick – I laughed out loud on first listen, not quite knowing if I should or not. ‘Blind Victim’ includes some of the album’s most intricate (but far from delicate) guitar work and a chorus with clean vocals, while ‘Terror Well’ is rhythmically the most conventional and “easy”. Even so, a dark and twisted aura is present in the music all the time and the listed differences are essentially unimportant – the overall sound and style remain unchanged. Unlike many modern technical bands, Pyuria relies mostly on driving moderate-tempo grooves instead of super fast blasting. This is something I personally prefer, generally speaking, as it gives a traditional feel to the otherwise almost awkward music.

To be more specific on this “dark and twisted aura”, well, I won’t spoil your fun of finding out by blurting all the details, but someone just died. Listen to the album’s intro and outro tracks and you’ll know. I will say, however, that when squeezed in between those two, the actual music gives an impression of a crowd of madmen throwing a relentless mishmash of noise at the poor unsuspecting listener. Complete with lyrics about violence, murder etc., it really is a bit scary, at least at first. I scare easily anyway.

From first-hand experience I can tell you this: going through the mess of sound that is ‘Oubliette Ontology’ in search of enjoyable music takes time and effort and it doesn’t matter much if you’re familiar with the genre – like said, Pyuria makes music that is thoroughly unpredictable and, in a word, strange. Nevertheless I would encourage anyone to give this album their undivided attention for a while, at least. In case you happen to find the music (it is there, believe me), it will be well worth it, and once you’ve found some of it you’ll come back again and again to find more.