When you start mentioning the likes of Dødheimsgard, Blut aus Nord, Anorexia Nervosa and Manes as clues, this album can only have one direction. For sure, OPHE won’t stand for Office of Public Health Education, that is unless we’re being educated in very dark arts.
A dismal industrial drone penetrates a very grey scene. Sounds of suffering can be heard but faintly. The guitar is equally obscure, releasing a withering sound. This is sound art of the industrial-apocalyptic kind. A scream is heard. Not surprising really. The music, or rather its bleak soundscape, is strangling. Such is “Odalisk Incursio Sub Methaqualone”. A croaking voice can be heard in the background. Nothing will evidently penetrate this grey wall. It’s the nightmare to end all nightmares. The screams become more desperate. The drums become violent. The atmosphere becomes more tense and intense, but drops off for the last dismal 5 minutes where nothing happens and we’re left to our own devices. “Squirting Cadaveribus” is, inevitably, dirty black metal. Its murky sound is deliberate, as is the distortion. OPHE’s job is to lead us down the most malevolent garden path. There are a lot of indistinct screams amid this constant scene of nastiness. The narration of “Partum Chimerae” happens with the backdrop droning sound of an industrial process, which has suggestions of torture. It’s like OPHE’s answer to Hawkwind’s “10 Seconds of Forever”. The pattering beat and haunting choral accompaniment of “Decem Vicibus II” reflects a dream-like state. As is normal here, it is set in dark shadows. The sound is tribal. It is a very interesting piece. It is hypnotic. The hypnosis is only broken with an explosive scream at the end, leading into a minute of industrial chaos and destruction. Finally violence is forced down our throat on the black industrial “Flores Vere A Peccatis”. There follows a nightmarish piece, interrupted with an explosion and a further infusion of violence and chaos. It all leads to nastiness, but done in a way that haunts us and imprints itself on our brain.
In spite of its pre-set limitation of being grey and greyer, this is a creative work. Far from sticking to the confines of a particular brand of black metal, OPHE manipulate sounds and atmospheres.
(7.5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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