UMUR
"Diagrams Of Conciousness" is the debut full-length studio album by Finland, Helsinki based technical/progressive death metal act Omnivortex. The album was released through Concorde Music Company in November 2020. Omnivortex formed in 2019 and feature a quintet lineup (bassist, drummer, lead vocalist, and two guitarists. One of the latter also performs additional vocals). An official video was released for the track "At The Mountains Of Madness".
Stylistically the material on the 9 track, 53:18 minutes long album is technical/progressive death metal with intelligible growling vocals and the rare use of shouted cleaner vocals. The music can be both brick heavy, groove oriented, and more fast-paced and brutal. Omnivortex have a very distinct sounding riffing style, which they use on all tracks. I´m reminded of the most brutal parts of Gojira´s sound, although Omnivortex aren´t clones or anything like that and they certainly are more death metal oriented than the French band. There´s also references to an artists like Obscura and their technical futuristic sounding death metal. It´s obvious that Omnivortex are skilled musicians and they easily pull off playing the rather technical material featured on "Diagrams Of Conciousness".
At times I´m impressed by the songwriting, which is both effectful and engaging, but it´s mostly on an individual track by track level, rather than on a full album level. In other words the tracks simply end up sounding too much the same, and they aren´t easy to tell apart. So a few more hooks and recognisable sections would have made the album a lot more interesting. It´s actually a bit odd that the album has that affect on me, because when you listen to the tracks, they do feature a healthy dose of rhythm changes and interesting song writing ideas, but maybe the riffing styles and vocal styles are just too similar on all tracks.
It´s not a major issue though and as "Diagrams Of Conciousness" also features a powerful, detailed, and well sounding production, it is upon conclusion a good quality debut release by Omnivortex. It shows promise and there are some high level skills on display here, which are definitely great assets, but as mentioned above the memorability of the songwriting is slightly lacking. Therefore a 3 - 3.5 star (65%) rating is warranted.