OMNIUM GATHERUM: The Burning Cold (DEATH METAL): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

The Finns of Omnium Gatherum are meticulous musicians who are masters in the art of building unifying anthems and who regularly offer quality albums. Markus Vanhala builds with his companions a work of rare intelligibility, dressed in a limpid production that forces respect and magnified by philosophical themes that inspire admiration. The previous opus "Grey Heavens" had left some admirers hungry, although it won the favours of the editors. More determined than ever, the Finns come back with a record opposing fire and ice, hell and heaven, tenderness and violence.

Immediately, the album is torn between the hot 'The Burning' with its warm sounds and its joyful melody and the icy 'The Cold' with its sharp riffs sprinkled with a certain immaterial winter quietness. The opus then invites us on a journey on the ice floe where the dazzling reflections of a music of immaculate beauty blind us, where the reinforced concrete riffs are the foundations of a glorious temple, the drums its pulsating heart and finally where the voice whispers a sweet litany.

Although a biting cold blows incessantly, 'Rest In Your Heart' allows us to enjoy moments bathed in warm melodies. The harmonized riffs and the ample tempo leave enough space to enjoy high-quality vocal lines. The snow turns to mud, while human lines converge on burning and ravaged battlefields ('Over The Battlefield'), where the stripped guitar erects a dark and serene atmosphere, like a regained freedom, a calming after a final heroic charge.

It is also the warmth that dresses the musical evolutions of the opus. A warmth induced by the heavy riffs and the omnipresent blasts of 'Driven By Conflict' but beyond a simple violence of facade, the band nourishes its work with existential reflections. In the middle of the furnace, the fluid riffs, the melodic flights ('Be The Sky' or 'Fearless Entity') and the duels between synthesizer and guitar are inhabited by a pure grace. Hectic rhythms, heavy blasts and wild cavalcades worthy of Arch Enemy, a voice from beyond the grave close to Malevolent Creation, Entombed or Dark Tranquillity, we are clearly in a Death Old School. To these bases, the band adds unstoppable technical elements, dark atmospheric dressings and quick solitary interventions ('God Go First').

"The Burning Cold" is a flawless album. The variations of textures or voices, the drums, the backbone of the compositions, the cold keyboards and the human themes that resonate in each of us are all the basis of a manifesto of fire and ice. Omnium Gatherum reached here a rare degree of freedom and emotion. - Official website

OMNIUM GATHERUM

THE BURNING COLD

CENTURY MEDIA RECORDS

DEATH METAL