By Tim Bolitho-Jones
According to Google, ‘Omophagia’ is the act of eating raw flesh, usually within the context of occult rituals. It is linked particularly to the worship of Dionysus, the Greek God of fertility, religious ecstasy, ritual madness and, uh, theatre. So what’s the first thing we all think of when it comes to eating uncooked meat while worshipping such a figure? That’s right! Death metal. You can’t enjoy your interval ice cream without it.
And true to form, Omophagia the band make one heck of a brutal noise. They’re purveyors of old-school death and these songs are fast and punchy with a nicely technical edge. They have enough musical depth to keep hardened musicians paying attention and plenty of closed-fist aggression to make sure the pit dwellers are happy too.
Guitar nerds especially are going to get a real kick out of ‘646965.’ Over the course of these nine songs, the Swiss/Brazilian outfit cram in enough lightning-fast solos to make even the most nimble-fingered string-plucker envious. Mercifully, they don’t wander into Steve Vai levels of self-important fret strangulation but work their skills into the context of each individual song. They know exactly how to reign things in while still looking impressive, the axe is probably the sharpest weapon in their arsenal.
All technical wizardry aside, Omophagia are still a mercilessly heavy band. The opening title track is a succession of percussive blasts to the head and chest, while the closing ‘Absolute Zero’ consists of the word “die” being screamed repeatedly over a ferocious sonic maelstrom. Sandwiched between those two songs are eight others, each one crammed with blast beats and mechanised savagery. The musicianship is terrific yes, but it’s employed solely to destroy you. They’re a precision engineered tool of total devastation and their PHD was written on human skin.
As decent as it gets though, ‘646965’ doesn’t sound like the band have fully hit their stride yet. There’s a lot of white-knuckle enjoyment to be had here, but few of the tracks stick in your memory once they’ve finished. Memorable hooks have been sacrificed in favour of carefully-calculated musical sequences and while that’s perfectly fine, it does mean that Omophagia have the vibe of a perpetual underground band. They’re probably going to do well enough as a cult band but cracking the glass ceiling may prove to be a challenge from this point on.
For now, though, ‘646965’ is a perfectly enjoyable slice of death metal. If anything, listening to them is a bit like having the absolute shit kicked out of you by a Kung Fu master. At first it seems like nothing but raw pummelling, but when you look back at what they did it’s hard not to appreciate how much technique they used.
- ‘646965’ is released on 6 September. You can get your copy HERE.
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