OUR SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON US

Melting The Ice In The Hearts Of Men

VÁN Austrian outcasts reinvent the post-doom wheel

Somewhere in the hazy grey between post-metal, doom, sludge and prog, OSDOU have found a new way to channel their existential churn. The Austrians’ fourth album is an unapologetic trip, with four sprawling but endlessly fascinating tracks that blend scabrous aggression with stately pomp and dense psychedelia with sledgehammer repetition. Opener Galahad is 12 minutes of multidimensional doom, graced with soaring melodies but infused with wrongness and dread. You may detect flashes of Primordial’s enraged melodrama or Enslaved’s windswept shock’n’awe amid the woozy, kaleidoscopic drag of Song Of The Lower Classes, but OSDOU’S vision is never less than singular. It ends with Sky Burial: a flurry of drones and skewed crescendos that morphs into a throbbing goth metal stomp. Utter madness and stunning from start to end.

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FOR FANS OF: Primordial, Swallow The Sun, Yob