Omega Infinity – The Anticurrent
Release Date: 24th Febraury 2023
Label: Season Of Mist
Bandcamp
Genre: Black Metal, Heavy Metal, Void Metal.
FFO: Second To Sun, An Abstract Illusion, Ultha.
Review By: Ross Bowie
Omega Infinity return with their sophomore album The Anticurrent, as the two-piece band bring their blend of blackened death metal, electronics, and dark ambience to the fold as they create a narrative-driven album. 2020’s Solar Spectre was an album about a journey into “The Void” the songs worked as a cohesive piece about a journey through the solar system. However, this time around the band explores the concept of time from its beginnings in the big bang, travelling through civilization and burrowing down to the end of the universe.
The genre bending of this album takes a while to adjust, and this is the case right from the opening track. The Alpha is furious and electric, with bellowing screams that sound like bodies rising from the grave, but this is all counter-balanced by a soft piano melody. The piano elements of the song offer a nice touch of melody, while the vocals are used more as a texture. However, the placement of the piano and electronics seems oddly placed. The song sounds like a piano track was just placed on top and never thought of again; it can be jarring and at point overpowering. Unfortunately, this is a consistent theme of The Anticurrent. The ideas are sound in mind, but once they come to fruition, they just don’t sit with each other. To The Stars suffers greatly from this, as the electronics take away the raw aggression and dilute the song down rather than pushing it forward.
This leads to the album’s other main issue, and that is editing. This collection of songs is fun and often expansive while not being scared to beat you over the head with its intensity, but, three of the tracks reach over seven minutes, while Voices From The End Of Time takes a minimalist outro and stretches the songs length to over 12 minutes for no real reason. A good chunk of time could have been cut off some of these songs, and the album would be snappier and over all better for it. The riffs and playfulness are great, but can feel repeated for the sake of it rather than serving the songs themselves.
What is never in doubt, however, is how talented the musicians behind Omega Infinity are. Their talent is on show throughout the 7 original songs. Every song blasts away and offers extremes at every turn, the few breaks the album does take, you know it’s just waiting and winding up to whip you away again with its blistering pace and vocals. The vocals are often used more as a percussive tool, but when they do take a front seat, they’re ready to cave your skull in at any second. The album does feature numerous musical guests and these sections really take The Anticurrent up to another level, especially Iron Age, which features Seven Spires vocalist Adrienne Cowan. Her vocals sitting front and centre while chaos revolves around her is the album highlight, while her clean vocals offer a beautiful passage among all the rage the band conjure up. But it’s the ferocious outro that makes this the albums centrepiece and highest peak.
The band continue to make intriguing and exciting concepts to go along with their music and can create soundscapes that are mesmerising, but, just need that extra voice to tell them when enough is enough to really propel Omega Infinity to that next level.
(3.5 / 5)
