Orae is more or less a progressive, avant-grade black metal project from Germany. Featuring members of Alchemyst, Anael, & Hellish Crossfire; the quartet has come together to release their debut demo disbirth. I have listened to a lot of black metal this year, or particularly the past 3 years, but something like this only comes around every so often. A band comes together to experiment within the lesser-explored, dark tunnels of the genre, and in doing so manage to build something that is simultaneously dissonant and chaotic, yet still quite listenable.
"Intriguing" is probably a good adjective to start with. You never know exactly what you're going to get when it comes to Orae. The band has a number of different modes ranging from jazz-infused 2nd wave to instrumental drone. I suppose what struck me first initially was the vocals. Rather than going for the most hair-raising screech, PW prefers to take a more proclamative approach. It falls somewhere between spoken word and simply shouting in your face like some crazed vagrant in the street. This choice alone would be interesting, but the additive effect of his waivering cadence and disjointed delivery results in something better described as "captivating." The lengthy title track sounds like some deranged, apocalyptic poetry reading.
The compositions themselves are equally strange and experimental. "Defection" is my personal favorite, but disbirth is cohesive enough in its tone and structure to make full listens critical. I find myself thinking about acts like Imperial Triumphant, Krallice, and Howls of Ebb. The songs have a similar twisting, contorting, serpentlike quality that comes through in both noise and technicality. And further on that last word, Orae does have some skill when it comes to musicianship, but I find it to be more subtle and infused into the orchestration as opposed to in-your-face math metal. This is well exemplified on the closing track, "she lurks," with its impressive drumming that flows so organically from moment to moment.
This final track is also just a great summary of all that the band has to offer: aggressive blasts of blackened fury, bass grooves flowing into psychodelic freeform guitar solos, creepy drone interludes, and everything in between. It's impressive what an ear the members have for sense of progression despite all of the eclectic inspirations. I have heard this attempted a number of times before only to degrade into a clunky cut-and-paste mess. But for the members of Orae, it is no surprise that they carry with them experience from the other groups they have worked with. And now for this to be the introductory demo of a brand new project...they are going to go far.
