The Omnific – Escapades
Release Date: 8th October 2021
Label: Wild Thing Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Progressive Metal
FFO: Animals As Leaders, Scale The Summit, Polyphia, Mestis, Plini, The Helix Nebula.
Review By: Ryan Shearer
Australian trio The Omnific, under label Wild Thing Records, have released their debut full-length album Escapades. With two of the three members harnessing the power of the almighty bass guitar, there is sure to be enough low end to get a few heads bobbing along, but will it be enough? Can two bassists capture listener’s attention in the way a band with a more standard lineup can? Turns out, maybe capturing attention isn’t that important.
Antecedent introduces moody, dark bass tones over thick ambience and punchy drums. It plays with latin, jazz and fusion sounds to deliver a strong opener of varying grooves. Closing with a piano outro that sounds equally at home in a Wild West saloon as it does a children’s carousel, it is The Omnific’s way of letting you know there is more to Escapades than meets the eye.
Scurryfunge takes the dashings of jazz and makes a desert course out of it. The outro is sampled with sounds of conversations at a bar, and feels very much in the right place at the right time. The majority of the track sounds grandiose and includes overtones Devin Townsend would be proud to call his own. The Labyrinth Chronicles and Antecedent clearly saw the album art and dived head-first into fairground/ circus music creating some fun and memorable melodies. Fountainhead is buried in ethereal beauty, and lays an emotionally resonant undercurrent throughout the middle of the album.
Escapades is progressive metal at its most untethered; The Omnific don’t just ignore the rulebook, it’s like they’ve never even heard of it. The band walk a fine line of being written off as a gimmicky (2 bass, no guitar) band, so need to really deliver something special to maintain a reputation that won’t get them immediately written off.
So, what do I think? I’ll be honest, I tried two different approaches to listening to Escapades and got two opposing views depending on the context I listened to this album. The first approach is a focused listen to it as a complete product, and the other way was to allow it to sit in the background while I got on with other things.
In practically any other context, saying Escapades doesn’t do very well at grabbing my attention might be seen as a massive ‘thumbs-down’. The Omnific’s latest effort however, using approach #2, works solely to its credit. Dwam takes influences from ambient bands like Hammock which works incredibly well when viewed through a context of using Escapades as music for the background. Listening to Escapades from Antecedent to Posterity as a focus though…it was a struggle. The limited sonic range and lack of major catharsis or crescendo means it’s difficult to stay engaged with. Tracks like Scurryfunge and Posterity do incorporate interesting elements like orchestras and pianos to pepper a little variety into the Escapades recipe, but overall it doesn’t reward you enough during the 51 minute runtime.
However, I wouldn’t tell anyone to avoid it. Tracks like Ne Plus Ultra, Dwam & Matai are cleverly composed in a way that they’re almost designed not to demand attention, and are therefore ideal for music not meant for active listening. Slap on your headphones, get those tracks on a playlist and get some work done; the time will fly by. It works far better in this context than peers such as Mestis, Animals as Leaders or Polyphia do.
(3 / 5)
