I don’t know if Kevin Moore suffers from permanent root canal treatments by his dentist, but he sings like if that was the case: the joie de vivre seems unknown to the musician with the ultimately melancholic voice and listening to OSI’s third full length album “Blood” I really ask myself what happened to this guy that allows him to evoke this thick dreary mood within few seconds which leads the audience into the ambivalent world of OSI, sounding polymorphic and imperviously grey at once. With his partner in crime, Jim Matheos, and Gavin Harrison from Porcupine Tree on drums, Kevin Moore now offers us their “Blood” and the cover artwork reflects its consistence perfectly, because it’s dark, blurry, fascinating, somehow essential for life but nothing which we usually want to see too close. This is obviously a consummate frame for the experimental edge of OSI’s music which includes straight forward rock and metal as well as a lot of sublime electronica and quite some cunningly placed gimmicks that add a lot to the dense atmosphere. The climax of the album is marked the collaboration with Mikael Åkerfeldt who co-wrote and sang the song “Stockholm”, delivering a really cool and outstanding performance, sounding a bit like David Bowie in his heyday.
If you consider that rock music once “started” with bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks and that it was lively music you should dance to, it’s somehow irritating to see how far rock music has developed in this special case. Metal in the traditional sense is heavy music you can bang your head to and move around as well. The sound of OSI is alarmingly cold and perfect, well-thought-out and even better performed in all those tricky details, but instead of moving you, it freezes your blood.
-Thor Joakimsson
VITALS:
Release: 04.24.2009
Label: Inside Out Music
Avantgenre: Cold Polymorphic Rock / Metal
Duration: 41:39
Origin: OSI
Official site: http://www.osiband.com
Review online since: 25.04.2009 / 09:15:36
TRACKLIST:
01 – The Escape Artist
02 – Terminal
03 – False Start
04 – We Come Undone
05 – Radiologue
06 – Be The Hero
07 – Microburst Alert
08 – Stockholm
09 – Blood
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