vote
8.0
- Bands:
OROMET - Duration: 00:43:17
- Available from: 07/11/2025
- Label:
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Hypaethral Records
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Transylvanian Recordings
Streaming not yet available
In “Ugly, dirty and bad”, during a baptismal lunch in which the protagonist (a masterful Nino Manfredi) will be poisoned, Ettore Scola makes a diner whisper: “Don't you feel cold? It's like a gust of wind, it's like it's a wet veil passing over your shoulders, a veil of death”.
For more than thirty years, funeral doom has been present in the discography of any metal fan to reassure him that, even when he inevitably has to cross that threshold, he will do so at least with an adequate background.
In 2023, Oromet surprised us with a self-titled debut that took up the intuitions of Bell Witch and Mournful Congregation, but declined them in a personal way. The authors of “Mirror Reaper” have in fact often outsourced the emotional part of their compositions, entrusting it to collaborators such as the modern aedo Aerial Ruin, while Oromet work in an autarkic way, considering the melody an integral part of a sound fabric which, unlike that of the groups that inspired them, does not reveal glimpses of the landscape sparingly, but elevates the listener into an overall vision, revealing a majesty similar to that of the Panopticon.
The new “The Sinking Isle” shares the length and structure of the setlist with the debut album (one suite and two relatively shorter songs), but opts, without giving up the melodic impulses, for a heavier atmosphere full of pessimism, worthy of an adventure doomed to failure.
It is the electric guitars that guide, first painfully, then epically, the twenty minutes of “Hollow Dominion”, which unfold liquidly around Dan Aguilar's solemn narration, while “Marathon” instead is divided between a typically funeral doom rhythmic cadence (thanks to the multi-instrumentalist Patrick Hills) and a second part in which the melody, barely mentioned in the first minutes, finally finds an outlet.
And then, then comes “Forsaken Tarn”, where the desolation of the environment around the protagonist becomes resigned surrender to memories and time (“I gaze deeply into that cruel mirror/A tired and sunken face gazes back”), in an electric plot worthy of the best Pantheists.
With “The Sinking Isle” (ennobled on the cover by an illustration by the fantasy artist Ted Nasmith), Oromet take a courageous step, raising the level of challenge towards the listener and forcing him to deal with a less catchy (but equally successful) path of the beginnings. At this point we are curious to understand how these compositions can be fulfilled live. In the meantime, however, tell us: don't you feel cold?
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
