OK, buckle in folks because I’m premiering three tracks for you today. Why? Because I felt like it (and also failed to check my schedule when lining these up, but let’s ignore that please). We begin our impromptu festivities down under, with OAR‘s miserable, atmospheric, and unfurling funeral doom. Originally piking my interest since they sport a pedigree which includes Illimitable Dolor, Lycanthia and sleepmakeswaves, OAR quickly grabbed me by their own their right with their powerful and melancholic vision of doom. Simply put, “The Blood You Crave”, which is the title of both the eleven and a half minutes long track we are premiering today and the album it comes from which will see release on January 7th 2022 (yes it’s almost 2022 already), is absolutely crushing. No, more crushing than that. More crushing. It blends together glacial riffs and all-consuming vocals, creating a caustic and oppressive formula that is certainly not easy to stomach. Head on down below for your first plunge.
Oof. The first couple of minutes of this track are harsh enough but when everything slows down to an absolute crawl and those vocals unfurl across the resonant guitar chords it’s hard to not hang your head in defeat and let the music wash you away. When the more dynamic, black metal tinged elements return near the middle of the track, it feels like the caterpillar tracks of a tank, mulching your already defeated body into the ground. It feels weird to describe those things in a positive way but that’s the allure of this kind of depressive, atmospheric, and funeral sort of blackened doom, right? To feel the depths that the human heart can sink to and come back from them; the deeper you fall, the deeper the relief upon your return. And believe you me, OAR are going to take you deep. Even the “lighter” elements, in the form of a deftly strummed guitar line that winks through the static near the end of the track, is set up to drag you further down.
As mentioned above, The Blood You Crave releases on January 7th via Blighttown Records. Head on over to their site to pre-order this monolithic release. There’s plenty more of the excellency that this track exhibits on there.