2023 has already seen a slew of Mournful albums that makes one with that the Sun would just Slumber for the rest of the year. Running along to canon-ball the already big pile of Doom albums is Oromet, with their grand debut that seemingly came out of nowhere. Starting things off with a 22 minute song that sounds like an expanded version of Pallbearer‘s style on their debut album Sorrow and Extinction, this band show that they are equally adapt at making such long songs that develop properly and sustain the momentum of the moods contained. “Familiar Spirits” has some varied drumming and lead work in the guitar playing that keeps everything from feeling too static. Though it ends on 6 minutes of synth sounds and clean vocals so drawn out and distorted that you can hardly hear it is a human voice, the stage is well set. The vocals seem to be split between the two members of Oromet, one focusing on a deep growl and the other backing up with desperate shouts, making the vocals follow suit on variation. It is a neat trick that I do not recall hearing in other Funeral Doom.
Moving on, “Diluvium” seems to deliberately contrast the variation of the first track with a very static build that almost only seems to move in the lead guitar at first. But when the drums get going a bit more at four minutes and then suddenly turn active at 7 minutes, the song blooms out in a gorgeous MENA scale riff that develops while drums thunder towards the end and like it was really an Inter Arma song in disguise all along. Finishing things off, “Alpenglow” plays around with a sense of finality and sentimentality by introducing some Post Rock influences and coming close to sounding like a Classically influenced piece around its middle. This song returns to the ample variation of the album’s opener by augmenting its ethereal breakdowns eventually by adding sci-fi movie synths sounds and a Folk influenced second lead guitar playing the song out into samples of frogs croaking. Oromet is a fantastically paced debut album whose beauty earns it a place beside Slumbering Sun, Mournful Congregation and Inherus as the album to reach for when you need to dampen the hellish glow of the summer sun. Do not pass up the chance to climb its grand peaks.
