Review Summary: what can I say that hasn't already been said about Otep? Pretty much nothing.
About a year or so ago, I attempted to begin a review series of the album’s by Otep. I got as far as their first and sixth albums before I threw in the towel out of exhaustion. I didn’t realise it then, but my problem with Otep wasn’t with album content but rather something more fundamentally broken with the band; utter, complete, vapidness. No album can better exude this quality that marks all of the band’s work than
House of Secrets (2004), an album which falls apart in its entirely simply due to
pathos, aka “an element in experience or in artistic representation evoking pity or compassion” (Merriam-Webster).
Structurally,
House of Secrets is divided into two sections, with five tracks each (minus the intros/segues at tracks 1 and 7); “The Chamber of the Hysterics”, and the “Lower Labyrinth”. A la Black Flag’s
My War, the first side comprises faster paced songs, whilst the second side features slower, more atmospheric tracks. The album gets off to a solid start; opener “Warhead” annihilates your speakers the moment it gets its hands on you, whilst “Buried Alive” provides a brief moment of accessibility before descending forth into oblivion. “Sepsis” and “Hooks and Splinters” continue in this tradition, with some truly fantastic percussion by the late great Joey Jordison of Slipknot (RIP). The A-side’s weakest track is the album’s title track; while it may serve as a much-needed break from the intense assault of the tracks before it, it is unfortunately marred by a poorly constructed build-up to a tacked-on climax. The track also serves as an indicator of one of the worst aspects of
House of Secrets; Otep herself.
Notwithstanding on what you think of the singer (the Internet can decide for you; I won’t), Otep’s vocal and lyrical performance on
House of Secrets is characterised by deep, screamed anguish, featuring more throaty growls than on the band’s debut album,
Sevas Tra (2002). Growling aside, Otep can tend to overdo her tormented-ness, bordering on obnoxiousness. Admittedly, this isn’t some biblical revelation, but given repeated exposure to the album, especially its more atmospheric B-side, your patience with her tendencies will quickly wear thin, unless you
really dig her tortured aesthetics and persona. If we think
objectively, rather than
subjectively, it can easily be said that a significant amount of it is entirely reliant on Otep’s
pathos. This isn't intended to invalidate Otep's trauma; what I am trying to say, loud and crystal clear, is that processing pain lyrically, musically, aesthetically, can be and has been done much better than this. Period. And although this makes it hard for me personally to say I don’t
care for the album, I recognize that there is very little worthwile *content* to actually grasp onto. Closing track and piano-ambience combo “Shattered Pieces” feels anticlimactic and lacking, and the intros/segues “Requimen” and “Gutter” feel as though they exist to give the illusion of a grandiose concept album, when everything on the album you’ve probably heard somewhere else before, if not done better. In contrast,
Sevas Tra was able to avoid these issues because of its generally consistent application of aggression, which at least gives you something else to latch onto, and a reason for the inclusion of tracks like “Emtee” and “Thots” to break its pace up. This album doesn’t have it; its heavily binary distribution of weight, caused by its “concept”, marrs its overall experience, likely leaving you bored for a substantial amount of its running time.
However, amidst these issues, there are a few redeeming qualities, albeit they are limited. I’ve already talked about how good Joey Jordison is on his tracks, but a special mention needs to be given to bassist Jason “eViL J” McGuire, who I consider to be Otep’s (and this album’s) only reliable asset. His Mudvayne-y and/or Primus-derirative technique and playing manages to bring depth to songs like “Suicide Trees” and “Self-Made” that would otherwise be lacking, although he is sometimes lost beneath the album’s overtly thick guitars. His presence, or lack thereof, becomes a determining factor in the song’s quality at times, which makes
House of Secrets’ B-side tracks such as “Autopsy Song” and “Shattered Pieces” feel like filler. Even with the high-quality instrumentation, which I can’t deny, it sometimes feels like parts of the songs exist solely for the purpose of shock value; the mega-churning conclusions of “Nein” and “Self-Made” can certainly take you by surprise, but these only work so well because of the premises they are built on; average-sounding aggro-nu-metal with very little engagement hooks. Genuinely, it’s hard to know if Otep actually knows any other songwriting techniques besides appeal to emotion.
So in short,
House of Secrets is, for a lack of a better descriptor, disappointing. Its lacklustre execution at the hands of its creator(s) certainly helps to present its vulnerable nature, but also its vulnerabilities in general. If you need something that is both a worthwhile listen that still pulls on your heartstrings, go listen to emo or post-hardcore music. Not Otep. To close off this review, here’s a quote from
Macbeth by William Shakespeare, which largely sums up this album, and Otep’s career at large, given that there has been very little growth musically or otherwise from the classic Otep (TM) formula since, I don't know, 2001;
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
2/5
