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My journey through sound, and kitties, leads me through thickets of repressed memories of the collective subconscious.

As I exit The Great Barrier Riff I sense a certain bubbling that gently emits from the speakers. I’m met with short strokes of clean guitar lapping at my ears. The melody remains intricate, and continues to evolve. I’m ensnared, though willingly, by the distant foreboding accents and delayed guitar swells. The drums kick in, growing ever more focused with each smash of the high hat. The music breathes deeply once more, and then sprouts it’s driving core beckoned by the screams of the subconscious. A wild tangent of fervent heaviness joins me with a smooth 90 degree turn into what I know Ominous Black does best, and that’s maintaining the listener’s serenity without compromising any earth shattering devices in their song composition.

This record sways back and forth like a branch dancing towards hell one moment, and cascading waves and pleasant breezes the next. The first track, given my aforementioned analysis, remains unique within my listening library even though I was spoiled enough to have them perform in my own living room this last Halloween weekend. This psychedelic quartet ensnares their sleep bestial riffs even when segueing toward shoegazey elements with altering both pace and pedal magic. The song reaches it’s final climactic crest following this unearthly transition (see what I did there?) before retreating back to the initial “bubbling” of noisy foreshadowing that just melted my feet into the carpet.

Track 2, entitled Consolidated Dimentions and Traveling Division, takes notice to the power of individuation of instruments within mix. A gentle evolving staccato of clean guitar is met by a sample that details nuances about the science of reality. When the song’s root takes hold following that sample, I am again hurled into a psyched out tornado of crushing groove given meter by a haunting lead pushed into the foreground as the drums fade  into texture. That same lead reorganizes briefly before falling back into the cavernous darkness, and only distant harmonies are evident. My obligatory analogy would akin these dudes to Pelican and/or Cult of Luna but that wouldn’t be within the realm of fairness. Ominous Black shows me that post-metal and psychedelic metal are styles lush with unique tones and organizations, but also fluid enough to accept the integration of personal musicianship and simultaneously inclusion of assorted elements from other “genres”. Philadelphia’s residents are lucky to have these time warping metal denizens in their regular listening diet.

I won’t spoil track 3, and if you don’t know why by now, you must not be aware of how much I hate spoiling the ending to a wonderful piece of creativity. Go forward and pursue knowledge:

Download Repressed Memories of the Collective Subconscious by Ominous Black for a FREE download on their Bandcamp Page.

Oh, you can check them out on Facebook too.

– Jared Oates