Day: April 30, 2014

The Finnish band Ordog only three years ago revealed themselves with an extraordinary album as Remorse, in which they provided an interpretation of funeral doom very personal, both for the chosen sounds and for the decidedly naive approach to the matter. Therefore I approached hopefully this new Trail For The Broken, fourth full length of their discography, receiving in return a partial disappointment. Mind you, the disc itself is not at all despicable and contains, indeed, several episodes of excellent workmanship, the fact is, however, that the sound leaden and suffered of its predecessor has remained almost nothing since what we can listen to at this juncture is a gothic prog doom from traits always rather unconventional but far from evoking the atmosphere sick or reproduce the brilliant ideas of his predecessor. If Ordog, until they were struggling with the funeral of Remorse, were able to make up for some shortcomings of the executive type thanks to their particular compositional sensitivity, with the landing to more usable sounds are pushed into territories in which they are not always at ease, especially for the use of clean vocals not at the height that affossa in several parts of the disc even when they are expressed instrumental cues of undoubted thickness. Aleksi Martikainen’s voice is in fact too flat and sometimes not even enough in tune to appeal to a wider audience, as it’s supposed to be the finnish guys’ intent with this evident stylistic jump, and the virtual setting aside of the more suitable growl doesn’t turn out to be an apt choice. The album lives of flashes of good music in which the ability of ours to baste poignant melodies is not less, but everything is characterized by an excessive discontinuity and, where it hits the target with two songs marked by a beautiful keyboard work as Devoted To Loss and Enter The Void, or as with I Ceased To Dream, which rises again after a not very incisive start thanks to a final definitely successful, we must also deal with an episode really disconcerting for its flatness as Abandoned. But maybe I’m strict for too much love towards them and, probably, who never listened to Ordog will find anyway appreciable this album that, as already said, it wouldn’t be correct to liquidate as something negative; if we want to draw a parallelism, their path resembles not little, also as outcome, to that of Pantheist, started as the Finns from a funeral death doom base, then abjured to land to more markedly gothic and progressive sounds. Simply, those who want to, go and listen to the title track of Remorse when, after thirteen minutes of real agony based on minimal piano passages and a riff distorted to the extreme, the song explodes into a psychedelic delirium worthy of the best Bigelf: the experience of this listening will be worth more than a thousand words to explain clearly and distinctly who Ordog were in 2011, a band able to reach maybe a few intimates but able to give them unforgettable moments, and what they are today, a band that will undoubtedly appeal to many more people without probably being able to leave a tangible trace in the heart of anyone.

2014 – Violent Journey Records