Oceans of Slumber - Where Gods Fear to Speak (2024)^{Release ID: 54706}

Oceans of Slumber have transformed into the metal band who have exhumed the most wasted potential of the 2020s so far. I never thought of them as being a bad ensemble, but a debut album in 2013 that showed promise has fallen on deaf ears since 2018's The Banished Heart. Two follow up releases that improved barely anything and continuing further into 2024 with Where Gods Fear to Speak.

This album is all over the place in its texture/style. I'm not opposed to bands altering their sound to adapt another genre, like how Oceans of Slumber isolate their melodic death roots in favour of doom/gothic metal here, but the execution of these sounds in harmony sounds more like a trainwreck. As a result, the album feels remarkably disjointed; none of these smaller ideas were given any semblance of connectivity and progression throughout the runtime. the record will non-chalant transform from a slow, melodically pleasant doom section into black metal blast beats and death metal howls at the snap of a finger without any preparation. And this, sadly, is further explored in Cammie Gilbert's vocals as well. There are a lot of metal bands that are perfectly fine writing music without harsh vocals (i.e. Katatonia, Within Temptation, late Opeth), but Oceans of Slumber still imagine heavy music not truly being "heavy" without it. So vocal lines become disjointed with a hybrid vocal delivery, which when paired with the poor songwriting, makes the vocals feel even more obtuse.

I thought a lot about the band Epica while listening to Where Gods Fear to Speak and all of the places that Oceans of Slumber should have focused on to make this record better than it is. Unfortunately, many of the best elements of those Epica albums like Omega and The Quantum Enigma is painfully absent here. What we are left with is a band trying to replicate one of the 2010s most consistent power/symphonic metal bands, but adding the worst possible aspects of progressive metal songwriting to the table for an overall lackluster experience. Oceans of Slumber are the modern day victims of this commonplace issue within the genre, but will likely get a free pass because of the progressive metal tag. It's really a shame and leaves this review feeling empty.

Best Songs: Wish, Wicked Game, I Will Break the Pride of Your Will