November 13, 2010

Reviewer: Jesse

Oathean is probably the most well-known band in the underground metal scene in South Korea due mostly to the fact that Kim Do-Su owns Jusin Productions (one of the bigger metal labels in S. Korea, if not the biggest; Dope and Rock Space being his main competitors), their longevity (still going strong after releasing their first album twelve years ago) and their overall success (they had a distribution deal with The End Records for a while a few years back).  Metal bands from S. Korea typically don’t achieve any of this as the majority of them struggle to even release more than two albums before they disappear, so it speaks volumes for a band such as Oathean to be in the position they’re in today and they certainly wouldn’t have been able to reach this level of success had they not been extremely talented.

2010 brings us their fifth full-length album simply titled Oathean which is beginning to convince me that the folk-ish and symphonic side to their music is a thing of the past and they’re content on going in the simpler direction of melodic blackened death.  I started hearing the shift in direction on the previous album, Regarding All the Sadness of the World, and it seems to have been cemented on Oathean.  At one point in time, you could count on Oathean albums to include female vocals, traditional instruments such as the haegeum and daegeum and very prevalent keyboard sections.  With Oathean, the songs are very stripped-down and use a lot of basic structures that you would find in many melodic blackened death bands these days: blast beats and double bass, keyboards creating depth in the background and piano interludes in the middle of songs.  None of that spells death for any band when handled creatively and tastefully which you can and should expect from Oathean.  The problem I’m having is that no matter how well they might play this style, it doesn’t seem to be their strength.

The album opens up with the song “Oathean” which contains all of those characteristics I mentioned above and at eight and a half minutes, is very disjointed.  “Two Faces” is a complex mesh of styles in a compact four minutes and forty five seconds that ends abruptly.  It sounds almost death metal most of the time except for when it switches the pace and some confusing aspects are thrown in, like the piano.  “Nightmare” is another track of similar ilk in that it has many characteristics of a death metal song before it transforms itself except that it’s over seven minutes so there are plenty of chances for the song to meander, which it does and again, ends quite abruptly.

Here’s the interesting and head-scratching thing about this album: the sixth track, “Grief for Surviving Part II.”  Oathean fans might recognize the title as the original “Grief for Surviving” is from the second album, Ten Days in Lachrymation, and is easily one of the best songs on that album.  Part II is just a “sequel” so to speak and not a re-recording or anything like that and is the best song on Oathean by far.  Not quite like the Oathean of that era, but it has glimpses of what they used to do so well: epic melody with the symphonics playing a main role and no pointless break in the middle of the song for a boring piano segment.  So what’s so “head-scratching” about that you ask?  Well, they end the album with the same song.  That’s right, “Grief for Surviving Part II” is on the album twice and the second time isn’t some demo version or acoustic version or live or anything… it’s just the same song again.  What’s weird is that this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this happen on a Korean metal album either.  Dark Ambition did it on their debut album, Tears of Daewongoon with the song “Bird (Play of Korean Tradition).”  Of course, in that instance, the second go-around was without vocals (sort of, the female voice is still in the second version), so I guess it was technically different than the other song, but they were back-to-back to close out the album and the song is over twelve minutes long.  It just didn’t make any sense and it makes even less sense on the new Oathean album.

If it were any other band, this album would be very good to most people’s ears and certainly stand out from the crowd, but like I said above, this isn’t their strength.  This is too easy for them and I don’t think they’re challenging themselves in the way they used to.  I haven’t heard anything from the previous album or this one even on par with songs like “When all Memories are Shattered,” “Grief for Surviving,” “Darkseed in my Mind,” “Wandering Soul,” “From the Depths of Despair,” etc.  They’re too talented to be content with blending into the crowd.

Release Date: July 29th, 2010
Label: Jusin Productions

TRACK LISTING

1.  Those Who Curse
2.  Oathean
3.  Two Faces
4.  Nightmare
5.  A Spiritual
6.  Grief for Surviving Part II
7.  Assassin of the Night
8.  Winter Bird
9.  Grief for Surviving Part II

Total playing time:  52:53

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