Oniric Transition

Yyrkoon is a band that changed a lot over the years. This album is their first output, and has the merit of being the most distinct of their discography.

This album is quite an experience. “Oniric Transition” deals with the world of dreams and tries to translate that into music using a lot of unusual touches. It has a lot of keyboard lines and ambient effects, some processed vocals and even the special participation of flutes and violins. The lead guitar has this orientation as well. The music has many different facets. For thrash, it is also pretty original, since I can’t remember an album that decided to follow the way of ambience and atmosphere in such a bold manner.

However, this CD is, at least in the first listens, abrupt. The multiple sections sound quite mishmash’d, detracting from the regular flow of the album and making the music confuse. Obviously, an album with such an amount of experiments and ideas would result complex and far away from banal, but even with the accessible touches the keyboards give, it may sound a bit disjointed. One may also say the use of this near-randomness was intentional to give the album that "supernatural" character but I still think the songwriting needed to be rethought, mainly to get rid of the less interesting/driving moments.

Although it’s macroscopically complex, the album seems to lack depth in the metal department. The riffs are surprisingly simple for a progressive thrash album: Most of them are unfortunately clichéd and very well known of hardcore thrash fans, leaving something to be desired. The melodic leads are more efficient, working well with the album’s melodic inclination. I’d like to hear a slight bit of shredding to add variety. The drumming is decent, nothing to write home about. Keyboards are downright the dominating sound here (too bad for the "keybrds dot'n belong in metuhl!1!!1one1" kind of people), being helped by the uneven production values (the rhythm guitar is way on the background). The bass…

There are some great moments all around: The occasional good riff/thrash break pops up sometimes, along with excellent keyboard lines in many a different style, making home for your personal way to interpret them. This album is particularly good to listen at late night, just because of the “dream” theme since it really excels at creating an abstract atmosphere. Length is adequate (35 minutes), so the album won't drag.

The album has potential to grow on you and is worthwhile. If you get rid of any preconceit and give it enough listens to understand everything, I’m sure you’ll like this more and more (that’s how it worked for me). Just think it's a good trade-off : I get basic riffage, but in exchange I have rich music to enjoy for a long time and in many different ways. If you want true standouts instead of my gaga, listen to the first two actual songs and the sprawling outro/title track.

According to the band, they spent time working with the song structures and riffs so they could create a more focused effort. And it came in form of “Dying Sun”, Yyrkoon’s next album.