Opvs Leviathan - I:O:I

Doing net research on Opvs Leviathan yielded little. All I could manage to gather was that the main guy behind it has been on the Colombian metal scene since 1992 but has only managed to make four releases – this full-length, one demo and two splits across three different projects. I can’t even remember the last time I listened to any Colombian metal, let alone which band it would have been, so this one was another random grab to check out something from the scene over there these days. I’m not sure why Opvs Leviathan hasn’t released anything in so long, but I hope it’s not because they spent years piecing together a masterwork that I’m about to slag off.

Opvs Leviathan play epic black metal, but it’s nothing that’s gonna tear you away from Wolves in the Throne Room very quickly (if ever). This band relies on little or no atmosphere, just stereotypical song structures and retro keyboards. Simple, generic, riffing which spans melodic black metal and folk does a decent job of supporting songs with an average length of seven minutes, although some transitions are handled with embarrassing clumsiness. What tears Opvs Leviathan apart is the dreadful lack of cohesion between the different instruments. The lead is simply awful, it’s the worst part, almost never getting on a level with the other instruments. Every time it comes in you just have to cringe at the blatantly obvious musical blunders being made. It sounds like his guitar isn’t even properly tuned. The noises used by the keyboards sound out of place and low budget. The bass holds things up with its clear tone, but my god it’s a ploddingly boring passage made though. The drums are undoubtedly the best thing: pretty high up in the mix with a nice chunky tone, they manage to make this barely listenable. This is all a bit of a shame really for example if we listen to a song like “Submerge’s in the Waters of Kaos”. It’s a catchy track that seems to merge and harmonize actually really well, which on a different album would have been probably damn effective. It’s evidence that OL are not without talent, but unfortunately something went horribly wrong in the piecing together of this talent. At the rate that Opvs release albums we’ll all be dead by the time they create a mature piece of music. Parts of I:O:I  make me really want to like Opvs Leviathan, but in the end the ambiguity that light threw on my view of the music pissed me off even further. I was not won over.

Bottom line: Epic black metal with a majority of sadly failing songs, I:O:I has a very awkward delivery but succeeds in some brief moments.

Standout tracks: “Submerge’s in the Waters of Kaos”

Score: 4.0

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