As is tradition, I've spent the first month or so of 2026 catching up with releases that I missed in 2025. One of the ones which most caught me was Orob's Golden Tears of Love and Sorrow. From the description, I expected something heavier and more harrowing but instead I found an intriguing mix of post-punk, moody art rock, and progressive black metal. Right? It's really hard to describe the sound exactly; it has this sort of dark sheen to it, a sheen which it proceeds to pursue whether it's going full bore with blast-beats or weaving in and out of sleek, modern, punk-infused bass riffs. Just head below to check it out, it's really one of those albums you need to hear for yourself.
"Sun, Borrowed", the first "proper" track of the album, already contains all of these multitudes and more. If you tore out that main riff which runs along the verses of the track and put it together with more melodic vocals, you'd get a straight up post-punk groove. But Orob are not content with that, instead blending that riff expertly into the conflagrations of guitars and harsh vocals that dominate the choruses. It's really interesting that they don't throw away the riff entirely; it's not like it stops and something else begins. Instead, they integrate it cleverly so that it feels like the same musical themes run through the entire track.
And they do and that's the beauty of it. Throughout the album, Orob feel coherent in a way that not many bands would before. Even as their formula calls for disparate influences from all across a dark spectrum, the French band manages to tie them all together with smart composition. It makes Golden Tears of Love and Sorrow sound like nothing else, a beast unto itself.