Review: "ocahaen" by ænorex

This new ænorex release is outstanding.  All six tracks are detailed compositions driven by shifting moods and complex arrangements that, while they remain distinctly goth metal, have an orchestral or epic feel to them.  If you’re the type of person who needs a comparison, I’d say it’s something like One Second-era Paradise Lost crossed with Eclipse-era Amorphis.  The opener, title track “ocahaen,” is a pensive piece with a lot of space in it, that starts with a sedate, ride-heavy drum pattern that is almost like John Densmore’s work on “The End” or “When the Music’s Over.”  It develops a simple piano riff and shows off each facet of the riff by changing the music that underlies it, and precedes and succeeds it – and the changes are legion so even though it clocks in at 8:45 it is not too long.  “contemplations (on the many benefits of cosmic nonexistence)” is probably my favorite track here, and maybe my favorite ænorex track period.  It is based around the repetition of samples from at least one horror movie (but maybe more than one), in the style of Rob Zombie.  I cannot track down the samples so the movie(s) must be obscure, but one is a man talking about a cult whose idea of heaven is nothingness, and the other is a woman’s voice talking about a creature that “looked like some kind of crouching beast with a single devil’s horn.”  While this track is more metal, it is not metal in an obvious way, as it makes liberal use of a keyboard setting almost like an eerie vox angelica that echoes the sound of the woman’s voice when she says “with a single devil’s horn.”  I don’t know if her voice is in D, or D sharp, or D minor, “the saddest of all keys” that “makes people weep instantly,” but one comes away with a certain sorrow from the woman’s voice, foreboding from the man’s, and a sense of impending annihilation from the punishing metal riff underlying them.  And though it’s done with a drum machine, there’s some frantic-but-precise double bass work that will remind you of Gene Hoglan or maybe Raymond Herrera.  As an inveterate Slayer/Lombardo fan, nothing pleases me more than effective double bass work, so those little arabesques scored extra points with me.  “nohopeno” starts ominously but somehow resolves itself into the closest thing we get to a rock song, and could be favorably compared to latter-day Tiamat.  “inentity” is more like a groove metal track that alternates between a spiraling metal riff and an acoustic break, and has some really nice double bass drumming, and dialogue samples from a movie that’s apparently about a man who can feel but not see an entity staring at him.  With “throne” we step into extreme metal territory.  Though it ends with a delicate piano riff backed by strings and clean-channel guitar, around the 1:40 mark we are met with European-style tremolo picking that could have been lifted from an early Immortal record, and drumming that is a millimeter away from a blast beat.  Given the orchestral flourishes, I guess the closest thing to it would be Dimmu Borgir, but you wouldn’t mistake one for the other.  The twelve-and-a-half-minute “err” begins with a sample and some piano and clean-channel guitar, but after the distortion kicks in, backed by a discordant organ chord, we find that the most compelling theme of this piece is going to be bass-driven – an unexpected but welcome choice.  I don’t usually find much to like in rock-based instrumental music, but ænorex is almost like Rick Deckard’s Penfield mood organ (mood, not Moog) in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and the changes in mood, tempo, and instrumentation drive it forward with urgency, rather than letting it linger complacently.  I’m really feeling this release, and cannot recommend it highly enough.