Album Review: Othismos - Sottrazione
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
There are days – we’ve all had one – in which it feels like nothing is content to go well. Sure, you can’t quantify pain, and there will somewhere in the voluminous annals of history be someone or other who had the shittiest day of all time, but that doesn’t take away from the ruinous sense of despair of being trapped in a joyless dead-end job, going home to a leaking mouldy flat to find a pile of unpaid bills on your doorstep, with nothing warmer than the bottom of a bottle for comfort. By gently folding the misanthropic melodicism of black metal into the ferocious morass of crust punk, Othismos seek to give voice to that despair.
Their sound is stark and unrepentant. It lacks the delirious momentum of, say, Converge, but what it does boast is this bleak cynicism, an ichorous disdain for all creation seeping from every orifice. It feels as though it stands at a window looking out upon the teeming mass of mankind set before it and finds nothing worthy of love nor fondness. There’s no catharsis to be found here, only the gnawing realisation that even now, the bottom of the barrel is nowhere in sight. It’s obvious from the moment hopeless broken chords collapse into the baleful roar of vocalist Filippo Masina. Othismos harness discordance and consonance, dipping between the two at will to swing between unsettling and enraged, “The Mirror” as good an example as any as it flows from a bloated ¾ bass riff into rueful guitar harmonies stacked atop it. Percussion hammers it’s rhythms into you, not always opting for handing out contusions through straightforward frostbitten blasts or crusty d-beats; there’s a bit more nuance here, played to accentuate and emphasise the shapes of the riffs as opposed to scorched earth destruction – listen to what they’re doing on “The Shape of Pain to Come” and the way the drums follow the guitars (or vice versa) before dropping into a positively repugnant skank beat section. So fine, it’s not the heaviest or fastest ever, but it’s not trying to be – the emphasis is on conjuring despondency, and we’re at full marks on that front.
Which isn’t to say that it’s perfect; transitions within songs sometimes feel a touch fumbled; “Burn the Flags” seems to have reached it’s natural conclusion at around 1.58, only to restart with a tribalistic drum beat that I initially took for the beginning of a wholly distinct song before I glanced at my phone and noticed the track had about a minute and a half left on the clock. “I Will Fade Away”, while I like it overall, is also very happy to ride it’s introductory riff for about half the full song. I can’t tell for sure but it sounds a bit out of tune as well? It might be intentional, though it’s an odd choice if so. “Pars Destruens” (the negative part of criticising a view as opposed to positively stating your own in opposition in case you were wondering) is composed broadly of three separate movements, which is fine, but the song is about 2.39 and doesn’t really feel as though it’s had sufficient time to capitalise on this, feeling more akin to three differing ideas just sort of jammed together than a cohesive song it’s own right.
Still, I’m not going to deny the potency of what Othismos have on offer here. Irrespective of the nits to be picked the whole is, ultimately, greater than the sum of its parts. At twenty minutes the drawbacks hurt it more than they otherwise might on a longer album, but overall the embittered soundscapes on offer here surf butt naked over any criticisms I might make and drag their balls over my head as I attempt to elaborate further. Spin after spin, this remains a satisfying blast of caustic pessimism, worthy of these drab English winters of ours. Consume responsibly if you want to feel worse about your life.
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