Album Review: Oraculum - Hybris Divina
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
People who don’t like metal more often than not don’t understand what people that do like metal see in it. It’s all growly-growly anti-music to them it seems, the shades and subtleties indistinguishable from one another. If we’re honest it’s not difficult to see why – especially when metalheads themselves can become so cantankerous about genre tags. Take a British national treasure like Sylosis for example: I personally think that more than anything else they’re a thrash group par excellence, but listening to the levitating majesty of a song like “The River” off their classic “Monolith” release it’s obvious why some might see them more as a melodeath thing. Without the required inculcation into metal, that room for nuance, for variation and the blending of genres, can be lost on any of us. I remember passionately arguing that Korn were a death metal band back in the not-so-blissful ignorance of my youth. And while I probably should have been shot for daring to voice such complete bullshit, the point remains – if you don’t know better, the distinctions don’t necessarily mean much. I’d like to think that I’ve moved beyond such unforgivable misallocations now. After all, Hate Eternal sound nothing like Wormed, who sound nothing like Portal, who sound nothing like Obituary, who sound nothing like Changeling... on and on in finer and finer gradations, the granularity of it growing ever finer. Case in point – here is Oraculum; still incontrovertibly a death metal band, but one that sits in it’s own distinct little space within a sub-sub genre that i like to call “bench pressing death metal”.
Here, the riffs are thick, and your shoulders thicken with them. Melodies flex like the muscular cables of pectoral striations. Beard growth surges uncontrollably, and women are noted to bring razors to gigs for fear of emerging looking like Santa. Drums pound like 25kg plates slapped onto the bar one after the other, and vocals are the staunch holler of a man whose bollocks were between those plates when they got slapped together. There’s strife to it; struggle. It’s the stoic sound of implacable will in face of overwhelming adversity. As though beyond mere strength of arm what matters most is the unbending drive for victory. A stern, overbearing sense of dread permeates and infuses every note. “Mendacious Heroism” pulses with dark, threatening melody lines like Immolation on creatine. The Sudden acceleration at 2.45 makes great use of a melodic build up in order to better crush the enemy with blastbeats – which then counterpoint an absolutely revolting melody and slowdown at 3.53. Doom swirls about it, borne within it like nascent thunder grumbling in the womb of black clouds swaddling the horizon.
“Dolos” – easily the slowest song here – marches out like the spawn of some carnal tryst betwixt Bolt Thrower and Asphyx in a foxhole somewhere. Again, that noisome, festering melodicism bears ample fruit through the melancholic hammer-ons / pull offs in the chorus and the queasy discordance of the broken chord in the introduction. Songs tend towards the lengthier side, but maintain a taut leash on your attention through sage swaps in tempo and lead lines that – while seldom technically astonishing – are tuneful and fitting nonetheless. There’s an understanding of tension and release here, with the appropriately epic closer “Posthumous Exultation” taking it’s time kindling this brooding unfriendliness, checking methodically through it’s implements of warfare before a nasty “Realm of Chaos” grind riff pummels you into submission at 2.35. Brutal transitions between fast and slow, tremolo and chug, spike testosterone levels airborne miles above the planet’s surface. You won’t be lifting weights when you listen to this. You’ll be lifting the whole damn gym.
Yet the heaving of incredible weight, while impressive, proves perilous shorn of form. The spine rounds, the range of motion undisciplined, momentum allowed to bear the burden that by rights should fall to flesh alone. As such, Oraculum aren’t always plying their trade with the tightest grip possible. It’s noticeable right from the opening of “The Great One” that the drums and guitars aren’t always synchronised particularly smoothly, and that forms something of a recurrent theme throughout. This isn’t a dealbreaker – even on this song the somewhat slippery performance is mitigated by sheer songwriting acumen. A rancid slow and melodic bit at 2.38 with crafty interplay between leads at mid registers and high registers accentuates the impact of brutalising speed-ups at 3.58 and 4.04. Yet it is noticeable – I’ve sung the praises of “Dolos” already, but performance-wise it too is looser than sign language with a drunk octopus. I’ve sporadic other complaints here and there – nothing fatal, but I do question the necessity of “The Heritage of our Brotherhood”. It’s a slow, short interlude of sorts that follows what was already the slowest song on here and feels to be something of an unnecessary continuation of a theme. There’s also a bit in “Spiritual Virility” – which otherwise stands as a neck-severing cardio apocalypse of ultra-high protein riffs and blasts – in which the lyrics “gets rid of the pain of being a man” visit us. “Man” not being just pronounced... y’know, normally, but instead pronounced “May-un!” like James fucking Brown rose from the grave for a guest spot on a Chilean death metal album.
I could go on in a similar vein. But past a point the sense comes that I’m picking at increasingly more minute nits, pockmarks on an otherwise mighty physique. If Oraculum can dial in their performance a notch or two then they’ve got formidable potential. I don’t know how many new-year-new-me resolutions you’ve got on the go right now, but if any one of them is exercise related then pick this up and allow Oraculum to catapult you into the squat rack. This is music for doing deadlifts at the dusk of civilisation. The end is nigh, but we both know that you’ve got a few more reps in you and after all, that barbell isn’t gonna curl itself.
