Review Summary: I listened to this. It took me three days and spare change.
Most music aficionados can mention a long album you know? Those doom records with a fifty-two minute track time, that random, four and a something hour ambient song at the back of a Yeule album, but most won’t have spent the time getting the most out of twenty-seven hour long avant progressive cluster-f
uck brutal improv death metal record, nor would they willingly submit themselves to listening to the damn thing over and over again. Luckily for them, there’s at least one reviewer ready to dip his toes in, ready to submerge in the depths over and over until it all makes sense. Enter
Omni, a labour of love, hatred and despair from Nashville residents Skin Tension who back their rather modestly timed,
Machinic Impulses Of The Hyperreal (released around this time last year) with an effort with a runtime well past what’s considered
normal in today’s musical circles. In case you haven’t surmised it already (and I’m sure you have, dear reader) that brings me to the main question that needs asking: Twenty-seven f
ucking hours? Really?
[Deep breathing exercises here]
Specifically speaking,
Omni is a whopping 131 tracks, broken into 36 sides. Yep, 27 hours of musical mayhem that stretches across a plain of death metal, the avant garde, free improvisation and the world's listed and unlisted in between. If you measure this record simply by its run-time, no one would blame you for feeling a little intimidated by its sheer length (that’s what she said?). Thankfully, Skin Tension is aware that the scope of
Omni may not be for everyone. They state:
The listener is encouraged to explore, don't feel like you need to stick with the tracklist, skip around if need be. The duo encourage freedom and experimentation both in the making and in the listening—as if aware that boxing a listener to a set experience may diminish the album’s overall mood, perception and inherent quality. Naturally I gave this album a “free listen”, picking apart the tracklist in random fashion, picking a single track from each ‘side’, and even making a comfortable twelve-tracked record from the full pantry of musical ideas
Omni offers. In direct comparison to a complete play-through, the parallel of quality is astounding; the flow of the record is with and without mention showcasing more than enough content to get a listener through the day…or the next if you so choose. That’s the beauty of it.
Omni is Skin Tension laid bare, but all the power is in the listener’s lap, to do with as they will. While adjectives like unguarded and vulnerable are rarely associated with death metal projects, both of those terms fit just how open Skin Tension is on their newest, massive record.
That said, there is a temptation to isolate each track on its individual merits. I’m not going to do that. Nor am I going to break this album down into its numerous sides. Instead, I’ll just tell you about the record’s juicer cuts, introspective wanderings and just why
Omni is a perfect record, in spite of the normally obvious drawbacks in releasing such a long-winded project. Take “Gate” for example, as in ‘out of the gate’ from the record’s introductory side: tones rise and fall somewhere in the region of “not quite feedback induced” screechiness, and yet their gentle grace blends into the tweedle of (normally dreaded) avant saxophone appearance and drum tom-foolery. It’s a manic turn of notes, settling into a cacophony of strudel riffs and aimless jam sessions. It f
ucking works okay. Unrestrained ideas clash and then meld together, acutely aware of each other and blissfully ignorant of
how coherent ideas should go together. It’s madness and it’s love all at the same time with a frenzied mad rush to the finish line.
The album’s tangent continues to knee-jerk and shift uncontrollably, “Animal Money” (Side C) continues to wrench flurried notes under waves of discordant drum patterns, blasts and warbled tones. Needless to say, and much like the few tracks before it; both Edward Longo and Josh Byrd are never idle. Between them they manage to cover the essentials: drums, guitars and vocals while incorporating a whole host of other sources into the compositions here…and everywhere else.
While very little of
Omni’s content would be considered straight-forward, there are moments like “Holographic Speculum” which come close to making whirring electronica, feedback, chimes, synth and muttered percussion as much a part of the Skin Tension brand of death metal as the snappy blast beats, riffs and gnarled vocals. It’s a stretch to even contemplate just how painstaking a process it would be to take hours upon hours of material and somehow narrow it down to a measly twenty-seven. We’d consider the same for the record’s overall mixing and mastering. But tracks like “The River” (Side H) provide contrast and quirk. Well, different quirk—tickling the edge of an 8-bit proto progressive rock energy before sampling the s
hit out of things just because. Ambient measures sound like a sci-fi contact with extraterrestrials, poorly dialled in over bandwidth and frequency channels. “The River” is a mystic, unanswered journey through the cosmos, tin-foil hat thrown uselessly in the trash as the message resoundingly gets through. Quieter missives like “Hirculation” and the “Previous” trilogy (Side T) provide a levelled introspective back burner to the rest of the album’s more morbid eccentricities through use of minimalist ambient compositions and effects. The ringing of bells under echoing tones feels natural, a clear break from the rampart, yet technical climes found in the many hours before them. These themes continue further, “The Unholy Star” and “Shroud” adding to the album’s cinematic reach, while lazer-ish noises force their way out of the grey in “Diet of Pentecost”. Even when Skin Tension goes minimal, there’s a lot going on.
Moving forwards it’s clear that there’s at least a process taken to order
Omni’s reaching themes. Whether it’s the venomous pandering found within the records first few entries, the cooler ambience of the tracks just mentioned above or the ‘label on the can’ type tracks (“Harm”, “Hostility”, “Drain Parabola” or “The Tetrarch”) that speak fire, brimstones and metal-jazzy weirdness whenever the whim takes them, Skin Tension have left everything on the table to be sorted through at one’s own leisure. Even the “Necrojazz” chapter (tracks simply numbered in order) sounds focused, despite the glaringly abrasive metal flourishes that refute the dichotomy that a metal meets jazz inspired composition would surely have. These tracks provide a sense of story, sharing stylistic touches that return to the record’s introductory madness while ensuring they remain individual, at least in terms of their own sweeping theme.
While it’s taken a while to get to the record’s closing sides there’s a reward for listening to
Omni in full. Whether it took you a mere twenty-seven hours, a redacted or summarised tracklist or a week to listen to Skin Tension’s newest doozy of an effort there’s a wholesome, cerebral feeling in committing to something to this extreme. The moments (and there’s still a lot of them) that follow the “Necrojazz” tracks are already some of my favourite within this style of progressive, avant everything-isms and act like a reward for my continued loyalty to this long album. “Vanished Underworld” tinkles with atmosphere; haunting melodies creeping through the atmosphere—a mind’s picture being replaced with an abstract carnival ride, villains from a horror movie in tow. It’s ensnaring, captivating and I can’t help but feel like I
need to be here. I’ll be surprised if anyone’s fought off the fatigue to still be reading this. I know it’s winded and yet I want to draw your eye over the colours of “the rainbow”, specifically those which close the album out in full. Of the shorter variety are “Red”, “Orange”, “Yellow” and “Green” dosing the listener with more frenetic, caustic tweedle-dee jazz wanderings and lighter, easing notes. These tracks are some of the album’s “less metal” offerings and yet remain just as poignant and thought out as the rest of the record. The following; “Blue” and “Indigo” return the music back to the fold, providing more ample use of screams and death metal “energies” without dismissing the build up to the final (yep, we got there) track: “The Rainbow” which showcases a lumbering wind-down, rebuild and closing climax—all in all, twenty-one minutes well spent.
Deep down I know it’s probably ridiculous to tell you this album is perfect, because it’s probably not right to say “chop these tracks and this order up however the hell you like” and revisit this against the grain of how the band wrote it. Except that’s exactly what they’re going to tell you anyways. Right now I’m going to dismiss the idealism of a constructive, objective scoring system; one that would tell me what I feel about
Omni is wrong. Skin Tension’s 2022 effort is exactly what it needs to be, what I want it to be. It’s freedom in aural form, disguised as an actual cluster-f
uck of styles and sounds, most assuredly presumed to be on opposite sides of different coins in probably different currencies and yet
Omni is expressive, technically on point and organic all the way through. For me, that’s enough.
