Omnium Gatherum has taken one remarkable road to get to where they are. Over the course of the past two decades, the band has transitioned in sound from a band rooted in the deep and dark aspects of melodic death metal to a more ambient and all-encompassing mature sound in recent times. They have also endured many line-up changes, including expansive changes following the release of their last album, 2018’s The Burning Cold, and the loss of a guitarist entirely. Given these line-up changes, it was always going to be interesting to see how the band structured their next release. Thankfully, the new life in the band has seen it embrace its melodic roots that bit further, slowing down some of their tracks but really pinpointing in on the melodies and harmonies for their newest album Origin.
Opening track Emergence continues the band’s long-running tradition of placing an instrumental track at the beginning of the album. This track slowly builds over its two-and-a-half-minute duration, incrementally increasing the melody ever so slowly. It’s not the best one of these that the band has done as the music never seems to reach that euphoric highpoint that these tracks tend to hit, but serves as a good snapshot for what is to come on the album.
The second track Prime has an abounding introduction, but outside of the chorus, it keeps a more reserved pace. However towards the tail-end of the song is an absolute belter of a guitar solo, that plays in synchronicity with the keyboard melodies and really makes this song stand out. The third track Paragon has all the hallmarks of being one of the band’s ‘classic’ tracks. From its galloping opening riff to its clean-sung anthemic chorus, Paragon seems purposely designed to get a crowd involved, and it will be very difficult to see it not playing a part in the band’s set lists moving forward.
The band then transitions into Reckoning, a track whose introduction feels like it’s pulled straight from an 80’s synthwave revival. The underlying riff work and the solid bounding pace of the drums throughout carry this song superbly, and it all comes together nicely with a neat, yet catchy chorus. The fourth track Fortitude takes the album in a slower, more ambient horror adjacent vibe, feeling ambient and orchestral at the same time. The track feels eerily similar to Cold off their previous release but is done in a way that embraces the heightened melodic ambience the band is going for. With that being said, the change in pace definitely comes out of nowhere and is sure to take listeners by surprise.
Friction picks up the pace again with a faster tempo and a more euphoric choral melody resonating profoundly for its duration. The almost orchestral clean singing sections throughout the chorus give this song a hearty emotional weight behind it, and with another exceptional solo bringing the song to a close the band has created something that will be with listeners long after it has finished.
Barrelling track Tempest follows and comes back to a more standard Melodic Death Metal song. The hearty bass and drum lines really carry it, especially into its plunge into black-metal adjacent waters. This is probably the most aggressive track on the album and once again the band nails an absolutely stunning solo on it.
Unity returns to the slower-paced tempo of Fortitude but holds a more optimistic tone compared to the earlier track, acting as more of a ‘calm before the storm’ type offering before album closer Solemn sweeps in. As an almost nine-minute closer, Solemn encompasses all the elements employed by the band to this point. This song has another standout solo and some euphoric high points, before orchestral synth undertones towards the tail-end of the track and a transition into silence brings the album to a close. This song conveys some real emotional weight throughout and is definitely a journey of peaks and troughs over its duration.
While sonically the band has taken a slower approach to their music, there seems to be more nuance with their songwriting and structuring. While there is still undoubtedly a large emphasis on the guitar/key dynamic that the band absolutely thrives on, the bass and drumming sections from newcomers Mikko Kivistö and Atte Pesonen respectively feel more profound than has been felt by the band for a while, and the marriage between the bass section, the vocals, guitars, and synths across these tracks really make it difficult to categorize this as a straight melodic death metal album.
The melodies between guitarist Markus Vanhala and keyboardist Aapo Koivisto are undoubtedly the standouts on this album. This pairing is arguably as strong as any key/guitar combo that has graced the melodic death metal genre previously, but the intricate nature in which these two play off each other for Origin is truly remarkable — particularly when there is obvious throwbacks in both of their performances on this album to the roaring 80’s genres of Rock And Roll and Synthwave.
Vocally, Origin represents Jukka Pelkonen’s finest performance, with his bellowing growls sweeping across these songs and carrying a weight of importance behind each word. Breaking up the routine with some spoken word sections and vocal harmonies in a few places really also brings a dynamic edge to these songs, and shows the band continuing to innovate on a vocal sound that they are undoubtedly quite comfortable with at this point.
Structurally, Origin is a very clean album with the tracks flowing nicely into each other. There is also no divergence from the band’s usual protocol of book-ending the album with an instrumental opener and a lengthy closing track, with this sort of familiarity feeling being welcome to long-term fans of the band. Even stylistic choices like the single-word naming convention for each song help accentuate the album’s simplistic and clean appeal.
With all that being said, given the stylistic changes and the new line-up, Origin seems like quite an apt album title. While it may not pack the same punch as its predecessors, these anthemic tracks are certain to engage a breadth of fans that have previously been quiet on Omnium Gatherum. With that being said, those longer-term fans who were hoping for something more similar to The Redshift or New World Shadows might be sorely disappointed with what is on offer here. Whether Origin is just a cool album title or marks a new dawn for the band remains to be seen — but as an album, it’s a wonderful entry into an already impressive discography.
