What is it about Finnish musicians utilizing the word Circle in the title, and making confusing, genre-challenged records? Formed in 2004, Circle of Ouroborus has been centered around Antti Klemi and has issued five full length albums, demos, a best-of comp and a split release with like-minded metal wallflowers Nuit Noire. The latest, Tree of Knowledge (Hospital Productions) might be my fave, a completely twisted, somewhat new-wave-soaked take on depressive black metal created by someone man enough to bring weepy angst/goth tendencies and more into an already bleak-vibed genre. That of course is nothing novel, but the approach to sound that CoO takes is full of almost everything that shouldn't work together, yet creating something completely new. By example of new, well, imagine someone who sounds like mid-80's Wire or Kitchens of Distinction being channelled via a lo-fi Fall-worshipping Ohio band studying their black metal chops, fronted by Peter Hammill desperately trying to get out of an airless closet. CoO has even covered Joy Division's "She's Lost Control" on a previous LP and both punked it up and hurled it a bit into a void further, believe it or not. And just when you think that you've figured out the architecture of all this weird sound and production, you get a bareboned solo acoustic guitar/vocal track that's just as fucked up. Sounds pretty good to me!
Circle of Ouroborus "A Root Casket" (MP3)
Circle of Ouroborus "Dead Eyes, Dead Soul" (MP3)
CoB or CoO?
Posted by: TheWormThatDevoursItself | August 07, 2009 at 12:43 PM
Whoops, sorry, the coffee hadnt kicked in yet...yes, they aren't that wide-swinging as to encroach upon britfolk terrain (yet)...
Posted by: Brian Turner | August 07, 2009 at 12:49 PM
Was playing this neat relaxing music based flash game over at Kongregate and when you beat all the built-in sleepy piano music it unlocks the ability to play with "levels" generated by any mp3 url you can throw at it. I thought to myself.."Where can I find some nifty mp3 files in a url?" and the great WFMU instantly popped into my mind. Went with Dead Eyes, Dead Soul and although I wasn't crazy about the vocallist, some of the starting bits really were great and I managed to rack up a big time score as well. Fun stuff if you want to give it a shot although you have to unlock that option but it doesn't take long.
http://www.kongregate.com/games/Reflexive/music-catch-2 <----- Game is here
I'm going to try it later with some more WFMU mp3 fodder.
Posted by: Gavin | August 08, 2009 at 02:11 PM
Sounds like a kick ass album. Really enjoy that sick and demented "depressive black metal" twist on things.
Posted by: MG | August 08, 2009 at 04:03 PM
Sounds quite a bit like God Machine in fact...
Posted by: NikLP | August 10, 2009 at 06:48 AM
God Machine, thank you. Nice to have a reference that isn't strangled in code.
Posted by: boil | August 10, 2009 at 11:03 PM