A UMBRA OMEGA

5-star to 1-star ratio for this album is 2:1, yet it's standing pretty high in the top of 2015. It's really cool that PA has this x20 vote system with honoured reviewers usually being pretty open-minded and fair judges. Yet it's quite depressing that a noticeable fraction of people here have ossified perception abilities and a lot of truly progressive albums get lost due to 1-stars from those. But I digress.

A Umbra Omega is nothing like you've heard before. Each of 5 long sophisticated songs switches between genres and moods every few minutes, constantly challenging your sanity. The vocals are absolutely deranged, going from growls to demonic semi-declamation to whimpering. They travel through the whole spectrum of insanity with each vocal part being done in it's own shade of madness, delivering all the types of schizoid state of feeling. Another huge hook for me was the drumming: you can focus your attention on it only and never really get bored. Occasionally bursting into black metal blast-beats, most of the time it's gentle and just pleasant to the ears. Accompanied by melodic bass this creates a perfect ground for the eclectic, intricate avant-garde music to unfold. It will include atonal melodies, pure extreme metal brutality, lots of atmospheric parts, some with a spacey post-rock guitar, some with female vocal harmonies, some with brass section, some with trip-hop electronic, some... I think I've got it across. Some things are hard to describe, you just have to hear them. For example, the 50-second synth nosedive at 4:20 of Unlocking or the cacophony with demonic vocals at 9:20 of God Protocol Axiom. The album throws ideas at you at the frequency of 1 ghz, yet it all holds together as if it were absolutely natural for one album to comprise all those elements.

One prominent thing is that the album is almost completely free of any repetitions. Sometimes I listen to prog music and think "that's nice" but with closer attention comes understanding that it's just some simple melody with embellishments which gets repeated over and over. Sometimes I just think "okay I got it, please play something else al last!" but the artist has no mercy. Well it's not the case here. Things can sometimes be repeated twice, like "I hail those whose pulse beats free" stanza in The Unlocking or the or the vocal crooning in Architect of Darkness, but not more than that - it's like the antonym of your typical repetitive pop-song. This in particular makes the music hard to digest and I suggest not listening to the whole thing in one sit and give time for all those complexities to absorb.

An ultimate exercise in insanity, A Umbra Omega is a beautiful, mysterious and completely unique piece of music. A masterpiece.