Artist: Orion
Album: On the Banks of Rubicon
Label: Independent
Release Date: 11th November, 2012
Orion is a Progressive Death Metal band hailing from Mumbai. As described on their official Facebook page, their music is a relentless whiplash of sonic fury comprising, often enough, of unusual melodic motifs and irregular and off-time signatures coupled with articulate and pithy lyrics voiced in the low, guttural, rumbling annunciations that we associate with good death metal. Though, the overall feel of their music is more reminiscent of jazz and progressive metal. They seek to bind the vagaries of intricate melodies with vexatious, diabolic rhythm in a blissful wedlock of a perfect aural orgy.
The band members are –
Vigneshkumar Venkatraman – Guitars / Vocals; Ashwin Kulkarni – Guitars; Anshuman Bhattacharya – Bass Guitar / Backing Vocals; Pritesh Prabhune – Drums
The tracklist for the EP is –
- Oh Sweet Ebulition
- Devoured Existence
- Astral Embodiment
- My Dying Prayer
Now all that being said, let me come down to the main point. Orion is more of a Technical Death band with an essence of Progressive melodies. The EP itself is a very average one, the recording quality being the major culprit. Here is an in-depth song-by-song analysis:
Oh Sweet Ebulition starts off with a well-orchestrated chaos. But disappointing factor in the song are the vocals and the mixing of the guitar tracks, as well as the recording quality. The guitar tracks are sometimes not clearly distinguishable, especially when the two guitars are playing different riffs in harmony. Vocals at times sounded very good, at times below average. The consistency lacked. Same was observed in the other tracks too. The only plus point in the song would be the clean guitar sections, drumming and the sudden tempo and mood changes. Without these three factors, the song can be easily termed as below par.
Devoured Existence in my opinion is the best track in the EP. The vocals are better and clearer. The riff is a full on technical one and the solos are great. The first solo being my personal favourite, pretty nice use of scales and sweep picking technique. The drumming is super tight in this track as well and couldn’t find anything to complain in that section.
Astral Embodiment reminded me of Enslaved. The track has some similar progressive patches, with off-time beats and similar vocals too. The guitar tracks’ mixing was again the down-point here. The progressive parts are really nice and for the first time the bass was clearly distinguishable. Vocals were nice, specially the clean vocals.
My Dying Prayer is the second technical track in the EP. The guitars again needed some more clarity, because in a technical track you expect a lot of riff changes and without proper recording quality you can’t enjoy them. The guitar solo is nice and the vocals are good too. The drumming, as usual no complains in that area.
Well to sum it up, vocals have been inconsistent. At times they were very good, at times disappointing. Guitars; as far as musicianship goes, is top class. With a little better recording quality, the songs would sound killer. Bass certainly needs more innovation at least that is what one expects from a Progressive band. Drumming has been superb throughout. Pritesh has handled the blasting double bass as well as the off-time beats with ease and perfection. The recording is not polished well enough, certainly needs some proper editing; specially the guitar parts.
Final verdict – As I mentioned in the beginning, the EP is pretty average stuff; mostly because of the quality of sound. Hopefully they’ll sound better live and their next release would be better polished and edited.
