As a teaser for a full album which arrives early next year, Octavian Winters not only dive deep into their signature sound but also take that sound into more exotic climes. Post punk, goth, darkwave, has, to a large degree, been driven my the cooler sounds of a stark, cold-war Europe (notable exceptions being Siouxsie and the Banshees and Ofra Haza’s work with the Sisters,) so “Saints of Absolution” offers a neat insight into what might have happened if such a scene had it’s roots much further east.
And so we find a heady mix at work, not just the usual dark shamanic sound that they do so well, the searing and spiralling guitars and the tribal groove laid down by bassist Jay Denton and drummer Randy Gzebb, but here an arabesque riff wanders through the song, sometimes as a brooding bass line, often exploding into a squalling guitar, always present, sometimes nuanced and understated, sometimes ripping through the song like white hot razor wire.
Lyrical the song has a powerful message, Ria Aursjoen’s compelling and comanading voice musing on false idols, not just those we are lulled into following through popularism and blind faith, celebrity and peer pressure, something we see all around us in the modern word, but how we ourselves can become lesser beings caught up in tangled webs of gossip and envy, peddling lies and spreading disharmony.
Like the full album to follow, “Saints of Absolution” was produced, recorded, mixed and mastered by the iconic William Faith (The Bellwether Syndicate, Faith & the Muse, Christian Death) at 13 Studio in Chicago.
Not only the sound of the band doing what they do so well, but also evolving that sound through genre and geography, unexpected yet instantly recognisable cultural sounds and musical tradition. Or as guitarist Stephan Salit so self-depricatingly states, “What a glorious din.” I couldn’t have put it better myself.
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