OATHBREAKER — Rheia (review)

OATHBREAKER — Rheia album cover Album · 2016 · Atmospheric Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Warthur
Oathbreaker's Rheia finds the band walking away from the crust punk that had characterised their early work, instead hitching their wagon to the "blackgaze" style of shoegaze-influenced atmospheric black metal.

Oathbreaker's particular approach is to do the whole quiet/loud/quiet/loud thing which the post-rock crowd love so, with quieter sections of reflective post-rock alternating with louder black metal sections. Lead vocalist Caro Tanghe offers pleasant enough clean singing during the post-rock/shoegazey sections and reasonably wild shrieks during the black metal sections, and in general the album comes across as a competent exercise in working this particular formula, but on the whole I found that it's rather unsatisfying.

To me, the quiet sections on their own would not constitute especially satisfying post-rock, and the loud sections on their own would not constitute especially satisfying black metal, and whilst you can construct a whole greater than the sum of its parts from such material, Oathbreaker don't quite manage it here. Check it out if you're really keen on the whole blackgaze style.
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