TWELVE YEARS OF UNWANTED OPINION
Razor sharp brutal death from Swansea, innit bruv, featuring – I believe – an ex member of Sodomized Cadaver. Sounds absolutely huge as well, with some session drums from the fella from Ingested (tidy stuff). The production is balanced and the metal is brutal. I’m on board with this, silly name and all.
Has it really been 7 years since this came out? Haha! Damn, my priorities are all over the place. Granted, I got very tired very quickly with the whole occult rock revival thing, but thats no excuse to take 7 years to review something. The Oath are pretty good to be fair, with decent amounts of occult swagger tinting this fairly safe play on the rock and roll template. The extremely-levelled-off production also compromises to this innate blandness which permeates proceedings. Its not bad, just… give it a bit more dynamic next time, please drive.
Usually not my cup of tea, well, ever lol – but recently (last year sometime) I did two Dream Theatre reviews, so figured it only proper to go back and commit this Symphony X record to the site. Its something I came across when I was about 15 or 16, and had it on my iPod, even though I was far from into any of this kinda stuff. Honestly, listening to this put me right back there in the 6th form computer room in 2005. Whether that’s a good thing or not I’m unsure. “Pharoah” is an absolute banger, as is the 20-plus minute title track. The musicianship is perhaps expectedly phenomenal, with my favourites being the bass playing and the drumming. Will I ever listen to Symphony X again? The answer is probably no.
I checked this out on the back of Michael Gira of Swans’ enthusiastic descriptions of it during an interview a few years ago. There’s probably a lot more going on here than I can do justice with words on my crappy “what I’ve listened to” blog, but expect long, meandering, overlapping piano compositions. If that sounds like your kind of thing, get involved.
