Omnivide – A Tale of Fire
March 22nd, 2024
Progressive / Technical / Symphonic Death Metal
Independently Released
Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada
Moncton is perhaps an unlikely place to expect to hear the brand of music represented in the mainstream by such bands as Between the Buried and Me, Beyond Creation, and Obscura. This brand of epic, symphonic-influenced technical and progressive death metal is typically found in places with a higher population due simply to the prevalence and accessibility of the kind of technical musicianship and acumen necessary to create this type of music. Yet, New Brunswick’s Omnivide have defied the odds and emerged from the Canadian metal underground with one of the most intricate records I’ve heard so far this year, though the year may yet be young.
This record, though I was hotly anticipating it due to having played a show with Omnivide with my own band the year prior, really knocked my socks off. I watched these guys nail a Necrophagist cover in a dingy D.I.Y. venue in Charlottetown and so I knew that they would put an immense amount of work into not only the compositions on this record but also the production, and it certainly doesn’t disappoint. It’s also not surprising once you learn that this band was formed from the ashes of an Opeth tribute band named Sunbird.
Vocalist Samuel Frenette is an excellent frontman who alone combines ravenous death metal growls with an exceptionally powerful and emotive clean singing voice. Most of the record is dominated by the harsh vocal stylings which I would compare in some regards to Mikael Akerfeldt while at other times feels more akin to something you’d hear from a melodic death metal band like Insomnium. It’s rough and vicious, but still accessible in the way that much melodic death metal is. The clean vocals draw influence from the worlds of what, for lack of a better word, I would call “epic” metal, such as Wintersun. They’re not really folky, but definitely feel like they’re the kind of vocal approach you’d use for regaling the audience with an epic tale of legend, bravery, and trepidation.
The riffage, provided by Frenette as well as fellow guitarist Nicolas Boudreau and bassist Alex Cormier, is some serious technical wizardry. The album is filled to the brim with copious amounts of shredding and sweep-picked arpeggios that conjure comparisons to Yngwie Malmsteen, the aforementioned Jari Mäenpää of Wintersun, and of course Paul Waggoner of Between the Buried and Me. But it isn’t all fast-as-hell ripping. The band gets tasteful and varied with it, providing the listener with plenty of gnarly riffs to sink their teeth into while breaking up different sections with the occasional short bass interlude and long segments of tasteful acoustic guitar playing.
On top of that the riffing is accompanied by the synth work of Samuel Lavoie. While in most music of this nature I find the synths and keyboards to be a bit overwrought, especially in bands that lean a bit further into the symphonic realm (a la Fleshgod Apocalypse or Epica), here they feel perfectly melded into the mixture. The guitars are not buried nor take a back seat to the synth work, and while there are plenty of moments throughout the record where the synths aren’t playing at all, when they show up they feel balanced with the rest of the instrumentation.
The drumming from Marc-André Richard is nothing short of phenomenal. The record is already full of the kind of percussion you’d expect, from ultra fast blast beats and rampaging passages of double bass pulverization, but when the track “Desolate” ended with a straight up gravity blast I was shocked. This is some seriously stellar percussion playing and it’s a huge part of what makes this album so great. As a drummer myself I always find this aspect of technical and progressive death metal to be the most awe-inspiring aspect of the music and Richard does not disappoint.
This is easily one of my favourite albums to come out in 2024 so far, and for it to have come from the east coast of Canada, a region of the country that is so often ignored by the rest of this vast frozen land just adds to its exceptional quality. While progressive death metal isn’t quite the kind of stuff that I normally find myself listening to these days, this is the brand of that sub-genre that I find myself drawn to the most. Anything that sounds like it was inspired by Between the Buried and Me is automatically going to pique my interest, and Omnivide did much more than that with this release. I’m very excited to see where the career of this band leads in the future.
Final Verdict: 9/10
Awesome
Favourite Tracks:
“Clarity”
“Opulence”
“A Tale of Fire”
“Cosmic Convergence”
“Holy Killer”
~ Akhenaten
Where Strides The Behemoth? 