Review Summary: Tesseract now, before it’s too late.
The intriguing and engaging combination of aural elements within the first five minutes of this album tells you right away that you’re in for quite the journey. Pleias opens with pulsating wavelengths, soft chants, and foreboding, disharmonious acoustic strumming that reroutes into a rush of deep, gravelly riffs and drum-focused dread. A window into the future is opening before you.
Within a few short minutes the acoustic strumming returns, more melodious than before. From this emerges a jazz-like snare/cymbal, bass, and keyboard syncopation; you realize you can toss your expectations right out the airlock of this sonic spacecraft as it hurtles toward the apocalyptic black hole ahead.
The opening track exhibits various conventions of a death/doom metal approach, but they are arranged in such an interesting way, and played with such stoic confidence, that you’re drawn in and held firm for 13 effortless minutes. Many formational twists and turns are present, but they never sound haphazard or disorganized. It’s akin to witnessing the end before the beginning, a vision of how everything will fit into place once you know how you got here. You’re already at the event horizon. There is no escape.
Axis and Ratis form the churning, crushing core, and the most powerful aspect of Omega’s sound overtakes you. The drums are the driving force here, alternating between thunderous kicks and toms, and frantic cymbal and snare assaults, continually changing patterns and pace. An utterly suffocating atmosphere emanates from the percussion alone; Omega then envelopes this primeval force with riffs that would make Darkspace double-take.
Tuned to a thrumming, low-pitched, and gripping perfection, the tone is immense and nearly engulfs the entire soundscape of the song whenever the riffs rise to the forefront (which is often). Production is key when you want the way your riffs sound to be a prime feature, and it comes through here with authority. The patterns themselves are tight and aggressive, striking a solid, satisfying, mid-tempo balance and creating hooks that are catchy, groovy, and yet still technical enough to reward repeated listens.
Omega isn’t content with falling back on this formula though; as the album progresses, the acoustic guitars find their way in, often when you least expect them, and combine with hypnotic keys, and floaty atmospheric tinges and flourishes. Suddenly you find yourself suspended amidst a soothing and serene celestial sea, watching stars shimmer in the distance as planets whirl complacently through the cosmos…only to have the peaceful panorama shatter in an instant, its shards sucked into a surging gravitational vortex. The closing riffs of Axis and Ratis exemplify twin compositional peaks, where everything Omega wants to do with their sound is realized to captivating, devastating effect.
The closer showcases the singularity. What Pleias suggested in concept, and Axis and Ratis pave the way for, Quadraginta manifests in fiery form. The double pedal/riff-explosion just after the halfway point inundates you, incensed and indifferent, a visceral, calculated attack on your senses. It gives way to a final serenity, and the knowledge that the universe will die someday, but this has not yet come to pass.
You have seen the end and still have a chance to decide what you’re going to do with the time you have left. Act now, before it’s too late.
