Om, Yob, Zom, Zaum!
The heavy duo from the
Maritimes managed to sign with the excellent label Swedish I Hate to
release their debut album called Oracles.
Composed
of two seasoned musicians from the New Brunswick scene, Chris Lewis (singer of
stoners Iron Giant) handles the drums here and Kyle McDonald
(frontman of Shevil) plays the bass and sings. You can already see
the similarity with the post Sleep band Om as both are slow paced
doom duos and they diverge from the usual thematics found in doom and
stoner metal. There's not a lot of projects influenced by Al Cisneros
and company so it feels good to finally get one and fortunately the
Canadians are more than worthy. One could denigrate them and say
they're perhaps too much of a copy and while there's many overt
similarities between the two, Zaum manages to impress and includes a
fair share of originality. But it's still pretty safe to say that if
you don't like Om, you should probably avoid this.
Even if it's a debut album, everything the band
wanted to create and develop is already well in place. Compared to
Om, it's heavier, more intricate and perhaps even better! Simply by
looking at the perfect cover art, you can already feel the vibe
they'll explore throughout the four songs/fifty minutes release. As
an ancient city located in the desert awaits the visit of a camel
caravan, you can smell the sand and the dryness of the dunes. The
ethnic & Arabic elements of their music doesn't feel forced at
all even though the two dudes are huge bearded white men. I've met the two
very nice dudes at their first gig in Montréal (with Dopethrone, review here: click me) but
it would had been easy to mistake them for true middle eastern
musicians since it sounds almost as honest as Melechesh and Orphaned
Land combined. Chris and Kyle are possibly two Vikings who accidentally met an
Arabic community while raiding the Mediterranean sea! The lyrical themes are also deeply related to the ancient history of the Middle East as it was surrounded by blood and religious feuds, appropriate themes for an intellectual doom record
The ethnic influence isn't simply a block that they awkwardly put on their finished construction. It's an intrinsic
part of the puzzle as it's part of every song. It can serve as an
introduction built into a nice crescendo like in the longest and
final track “Omen”. It's entrancing and serves as one of the main
ingredients in their river flowing songs. Their sound has a pretty
solid direction, ranging from ultra slow to mid paced (the “short”
song “Peasant of Parthia”) but it's always intriguing and
interesting. Just like in Shevil (three bass attack!), it's heavy as
fuck with a huge bass presence and it features the vocal talent of
McDonald who's pretty damn interesting. There's some shamanic
chanting (“The Red Sea”) but he's pretty diverse, ranging from
semi harsh and buried vocals to clean cult Om-like singing, I think
he's my favourite element in their formula, his tone works pretty
damn well with the music. His presence gives a larger than life &
crushing aura to the project
It sure is repetitive but it's to be expected
with a doom album with drawn out songs like this one, it's not
something that bothered me though since it's well crafted and the
musicality is nuanced underneath a huge layer of ethnosynthesizers
that adds another world of intricacy to the compositions. You're never bored during this voyage and you get the right amount of middle eastern doom musicality for your money. Overall, Oracles is a great debut from Zaum, if they can
truly put a larger distance between themselves and Om, we'll have a
massive juggernaut to follow. Another great catch for I Hate.
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