Omnium Gatherum – New World Shadows (2011)

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Finish melodic Death Metal masters Omnium Gatherum return with their best album to date: “New World Shadows”. After their killer debut album “Spirits and August Light”, the band wondered off with some lukewarm releases and finally returned to the spotlight (for us at least) with “The Redshift”.

In “New World Shadows” the band goes into darker territory and presents us with a more ‘classical’ Melodic Death Metal sound and their own brand of guitar acrobatics and solid songwriting. With this album, the band is sure to drawn comparisons to Finish Melodic Death Metal heroes Insomnium.

The album starts off with the crushing “Everfields”, a 9 minute track that hooks you into the band’s sound and never lets you go. Epic guitar riffs, masterful melodic sections and deep growls are what made us love the genre, and this song has them all, even some Death/Doom elements. With the mixing and mastering in the hands of Dan Swanö, this release sounds amazing.

With “Ego” we get a more dynamic song in the vein of “The RedShift” material and the guitar riffing flourishes. The subtle hints of keyboards used in this song (and the album) outline the melody of the track brilliantly and work excellent in the head banging melodic sections. The guitar solos in “New World Shadows” show that the band has not lost their touch for introducing guitar acrobatics in the melodic sections of the tracks, however the clean vocals (courtesy of Dan Swanö here) sound a bit off since this was the element that made “The Redshift” not a great album.

One of our favorite songs has to be “Solar Journeys” and the song amazing progression, similar to old-school Garden of Shadows. “An Infinite Mind” is another track that brings back some elements of “Spirits and August Lights” but with an updated sound, making it a very interesting song. “Deep Cold” is another crushing song that we loved in this release due to its Death/Doom sound. In terms of the least favorite song, we have “The Distance” a song that feels more like filler than anything else and the bad tempo changes near the end make it sound very out of place.

In general, we are glad that Omnium Gatherum is back in full force with such a great album. This release will surely appeal to fans of bands like Insomnium, October Tide, etc, since it has a bit for everybody into melodic music. We hope the band does not go astray and try something very radical in their next release (e.g. more clean vocals). “New World Shadows” is a very recommendable release for anybody looking for some solid Melodic Death Metal that is more traditional than all the new Melo-core shit.

Band: Omnium Gatherum Album: New World Shadows
Label: Life Force Records

Release: February 4th, 2011 (Europe), March 1st, 2011 (USA)

Official Site myspace
Genre: Melodic Death Metal

Country: Finland

Rating: 92/100
Year: 

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