Band: Okular (Norway) Album: Probiotic (2011) Genre: Progressive Death Metal Discovering what Okular is the other day, I couldn’t help a growing impression that the group is special, or more accurately intellectual. Or well, perhaps a bit ”out there floating on the clouds”. The composer and backing vocalist of the Norwegian band, Andreas Aubert, runs his own site / blog at Andreasaubert.no, where you can read about and listen to his music, but also read other articles, about (Metal) music – nice and elaborate reads, worth some attention – and find out about his writing work on social issues, on the one hand, or ”floating stuff”, on the other.

Such as: ‘Fear as a tool in political work’, ‘Hemp as a useful plant’, ‘Is fat an essential part of a balanced diet’, ‘Self-development for men’ and ‘Repressive and authoritarian Yoga-education’. Wow. So that’s the main guy behind the band, not the band itself.

But it does explain part of the experience I’m having with Okular’s Probiotic album. It’s just that extra bit more thought through, more creative, more ‘from scratch’ and more holistic. What exactly that’s evident from? Don’t ask me difficult questions, laddy! It’s just in the atmosphere, which is open and openminded (though certainly not for pussies!) most of the time, it’s in the composition, which is creative and invigorating, it’s in the execution, which is crunchy and spicy, and it’s in variation, which is rich, broad and extensive, taking influences from many a Metal subgenre, and beyond.

As Probiotic starts playing, the experience is like being suddenly dumped into a pool of ice and ice cold water. All confused, shocked, flabbergasted and unable to get a hold of yourself immediately. Okular delivers just that experience by skipping the intro, a feature I’ve grown so accustomed to in Metal that it’s quite the blow in the face to have to do without one, and dumping it straight in your face. But let’s be honest, why would you need intros anyway? Sure, they do a bit of necessary scene-setting for some bands, but in the majority of cases they feel pretty formulaic and pointless.

If their purpose is to guide you into the music gently, then they’re pretty counter-Metal by definition. I mean, it’s Metal! It’s supposed to be ungentle and in-your-face. Okular has understood this perfectly and wastes no disc space or playing time on a synthetic entrée. They pick up a good solid handful of their acid mud and smack it right down in your nose. You startle, you gasp once or twice and you’re back on your feet and gulp it down like it’s a fuckin’ coke! Delicious!

As an album, Probiotic, which is fancy-speak for ‘For Life’, is an experience. Over the course of ten tracks you’re pulled into undiscovered Metal dimensions and the experience is a bit like floating in space witnessing the hand of time morph shit all around you. In a way this is similar to the experience I got with Mytra, but the way this is realized is completely different.

Where Mytra is smooth, slick, beautiful and rounded, Okular brings it sharp, rough, harsh and jagged. With the base formed by grunting guitars that do all kinds of sticky hooks and pinches and drumming that is both solid and incredibly satisfying and spanning the range from brutal blasts to pure groove. Overlaid on that are tasteful lead guitars that do all kinds of nimble stuff, sometimes resembling Metalcore or Deathcore, sometimes not at all, but in all cases mighty creative and mighty intelligent. The cherry on top are the shared vocals by guitarist Marius S. Pedersen, guest-member Yngve Bolt Christiansen and backing vocalist Andreas Aubert, which span between deep growls and more acid screams, but always have a certain depth or fullness to them that contrasts so nicely with the sophisticated guitar work.

Not only the instrumental work is intelligent; this is something that’s valid for the overall album structure. The span of ten tracks is cut in three pieces by two short acoustic instrumental songs on positions four and eight, serving to provide a breather from the other eight, and pretty loud, songs. These songs are employed like a spoom during a fancy many-course dinner: they reset your taste buds with some freshness, some fruitiness, only to prepare them for the upcoming taste orgasm awaiting next.

Normally I would go about and embed a full song from the album to give you a taste of what you’re getting. This time, however, Andreas has been kind enough to supply us with a nearly four-minute album teaser. It provides bits from nearly every song on the record and serves a great overview of the rich pallet of acoustic tastes this pack of eargasm has to offer.

I can be very short about it. Probiotic is amazing! And it continues to grow on me every minute I listen to it. We’ve recently had a discussion here at The Baboon, some of which you may have followed, about our grading scheme. The issue was that the regular appearances of high-quality albums led to a grade inflation, so bad in fact that we’ve already given Zimbabwe-style inflated 12/10 grades. The Central Bank of Baboon has therefore seen fit to degrade grades given from now on. From now on, an eight is a ‘good’ album, an 8.5 is a ‘very good’ album. Nine is ‘great’, 9.5 ‘absolutely fantastic and something you must have heard’. Probiotic scores itself one of those, a 9.5.

My Grade: 9.5/10
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Lastly, you can visit Regenerative Productions, Andreas’ production company and the Okular Myspace for more info.

Tags: death, Norwegian, progressive, review

This entry was posted on Friday, November 4th, 2011 at 8:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.