OCEANS OF SLUMBER

There really is no pleasing some people. When OCEANS OF SLUMBER released their fifth album "Starlight and Ash" in 2022, they took a bold and utterly convincing stride into new territory, receiving widespread plaudits and praise as a result. Unfortunately, record label folk behind the scenes were reportedly much less enthusiastic and seemed to regard the new album as a step too far away from what the band were known and celebrated for.

Two years on, OCEANS OF SLUMBER have a new home at Season Of Mist, and plenty of fresh motivation to prove the doubters wrong. Quite what the problem was with "Starlight and Ash" is anyone's guess: an album of dark but elegant songs, realized without the usual doom and death metal trappings, it made perfect sense to anyone that had followed the Texans over their first decade, expanding their vision to include even more dynamic ingenuity than before. Significantly, the follow-up offers a partial return to the grandiose, doomed-out complexities of earlier albums like "Winter" (2016) and "The Banished Heart" (2018),but this is no panicked about-turn. Instead, OCEANS OF SLUMBER have taken everything they have learned about themselves to date, and conjured the best possible combination of those many, disparate, but oddly compatible elements.

Simultaneously the heaviest and most melodic record they have ever made, "Where Gods Fear to Speak" is also their most imaginative. Mercurial vocalist Cammy Gilbert-Beverley remains a focal point of rare distinction, and the effect of these songs is sealed by her endlessly affecting and strident performances, not to mention the introduction of some wickedly scabrous growls to her vocabulary. If moving on to pastures new has had any lasting effect, it is that OCEANS OF SLUMBER are more fearless and confrontational than before. This album hurts, like a bruised ego or a broken heart.

The opening title track has been out in the wild now, but it is still a startling creation. OCEANS OF SLUMBER have freshened up the dark excesses of their progressive and doom metal roots, building something both familiar and new. Amid the smoldering, brutally heavy ruins of an earlier sound, Gilbert-Beverly is a feverish, charismatic presence, spinning threads into the ether and thriving in front of this renewed backdrop. The music itself is mercilessly heavy, dense with melancholy and unashamedly gothic, and a fabulously organic and detailed production gives even the heaviest moments a noirish, cinematic feel. Shorter pieces like the gorgeously sinister "Run From The Light" (look out for a killer cameo from MOONSPELL's Fernando Ribeiro) and the deliciously featherweight "Wish" indicate a post-"Starlight and Ash" sharpening of chief songwriter (and drummer) Dobber Beverly's compositional blade, with countless ideas flung skillfully into the mix, but never allowed to overwhelm or smother the songs' melodic incisiveness.

Meanwhile, salubrious epics like "Don't Come Back From Hell Empty Handed" and "Poem of Ecstasy" eschew brevity in favor of languorous, labyrinthine arrangements and sublime pacing that makes every emotional crescendo a devastating one. In particular, "Don't Come Back…" is sweetly representative of "Where Gods Fear to Speak" as a whole: a pitch-black prog metal ballad with the iridescent kernel of a radio-rock song blazing away in its shriveled, morbid heart, it is both beautiful and brutal, and Gilbert-Beverly's vocal is insanely good.

"The Impermanence Of Fate" is, impressively, even better. OCEANS OF SLUMBER made their experimental inclinations more than apparent last time out, but this time around the curveballs and bold textural leaps are more tightly assimilated. From sonorous, static-shrouded beginning and the near-funeral doom tempo of its first verse, to the berserk blastbeats and fluid tempo changes that flow thereafter, it puts the listener through the emotional wringer, while dazzling with the opulence and uniqueness of the surroundings.

When, as the band have stated, the closing credits roll, an utterly sublime and fragile reading of CHRIS ISAAK's "Wicked Game" provides the soundtrack. Surely one of the most covered songs of the last 30 years, it becomes something entirely new under the auspices of Dobber Beverly. His tender piano playing, and the sparse, elegant embellishments provided by his band mates provide Gilbert-Beverly with the best possible platform to gently wrench out fistfuls of heartstrings, her eyes sparkling, and every note a sober promise.

Proving their point, their worth and their commitment to their art, OCEANS OF SLUMBER have given the best possible reply to those that questioned their vision. "Where Gods Fear to Speak" is a deeply moving and monstrously heavy next chapter in one of modern metal's most fascinating stories.