Oddland is a progressive metal band operating from Turku, Finland. They impressed a lot of people with their debut album The Treachery Of Senses about 4 years ago. Now they’re back with another little masterpiece called Origin.

The first thing that really jumped in my head was “Wow! This is heavy for a prog metal record!”. So heavy that it makes me think of bands like Gojira, Pain of Salvation, Meshuggah and the lot. Maybe not too surprising since the mixing has been done by Daniel Bergstrand, who has done work for Pain of Salvation and Meshuggah before. A second unexpected moment takes place when Sakari Ojanen‘s voice appears. With music this heavy I wasn’t expecting the melodic clean vocals he uses. Throughout the whole record they keep up the same heaviness combined with some calmer pieces. Quite often the bass and drums create a unbreakable wall of sound around which the intricate guitars and often fragile sounding piano pieces dance.

To be honest, at first I wasn’t really convinced about Oddland‘s music. But after listening to the album several times it really grew on me. There’s room to discover incredible and mouth dropping complex parts and layers in every song. And while I originally thought that Sakari‘s vocals were getting a bit boring after listening to several songs, he has an impressive range of emotions put in his dark and foreboding singing. It perfectly fits the spine tingling heaviness of the music and some passages actually reminds me of the clean singing in some of my favorite songs by Opeth.

I can’t really seem to pick out a favorite track or even a few. Every song has its merits and less sides and the whole record sounds track for track the same. Which could be a bad thing if the music wouldn’t be able to grab you by the balls like it does here. I’m really curious if they’re able to hit the mark that well on live gigs too.

If you’re a bit open for different and “odd” music, you should give this Origin by Oddland definitely a try. They’ll bring you a very “head-nod” inducing piece of heavy music that shines in it’s coexisting simplicity and complexity. 8,5/10 seems fitting here!

Release date: September 9th, 2016
Label: Sensory Records
Tracklist:
1. Esotericism
2. Thanatos
3. Penumbra
4. Untrue
5. Hidden
6. Skylines
7. Unknown
8. Faraway
9. Will