22nd July 2022

Review: “Starlight And Ash” by Oceans Of Slumber

“Sonically, I want to do our version of Nick Cave, I’m a huge fan of Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen. The brooding singer-songwriter types. I’m interested in exploring the romantic side of ’90s music. I grew up on Björk, Nick Cave, Southern Rock, Motown—basically, the combinations of music you find in Texas. Here, we have Blues, the hard stuff, Jazz, and so on. Our music is coastal, too. There’s voodoo here in the Gulf. We also want to harness that into our music and tell our stories. What we do in Oceans Of Slumber hasn’t been easy to categorize in the past, but with Starlight and Ash, we now have an identity… We have so much lust for emotional content in Metal. People are always trying to latch onto something, even down to Bathory. It’s like getting drunk and crying to songs, reading their lyrics, and how they’re delivered. Why not bring something real into that conversation? Why not bring big voices to that conversation? That’s how the band started in the first place, but we’re at such a place where we can write songs based on our feelings. We want to show what Cammie’s capable of. Let’s show her range and diversity. Every album we’ve done is cinematic and literary, That’s what we’ve been trying to get across in this little world we’re in. If Charles Bukowski drank too much and got sad about his mom, we’re that night. Or, if Kurt Vonnegut had laid down another terrible ‘coming home from war’ theme, we’re channelling that. We put these types of things into our music. So, everything about this fictitious coastal town is either zoomed in on a particular person’s life or zoomed out on the town and how it reacts. Starlight and Ash is our most complete concept yet, and it’s quite beautiful.” ~ Dobber Beverly

Texas Southern Gothic collective Oceans Of Slumber went to Studio G in Brooklyn New York to record their fifth album over 20 days in June 2021 with producer Joel Hamilton (Violet Road, Battle of Mice) at their side before enlisting Maor Appelbaum (Yes, Voivod) to master the record and little over a year later we have the final offering. Coupled with stunning cover artwork by Eliran Kantor (Testament, Heaven Shall Burn, Kirk Windstein), “Starlight And Ash” is a record like no other, burring the lines between music and art with a swagger and verve all of its own that takes little pieces of influence from singer songwriters like Nick Cave while having in its blackened heart the pulse of bands like Type O Negative. The achingly beautiful opener “The Waters Rising” builds from the acoustic with power, poise alongside a broader and deeper musical palette as it hints at a dark desire to drown with a stunning vocal performance from Cammie Beverly, whose lyrics are as mournful and melancholic as over the duration record. The Southern twang of “The Lighthouse” is unmistakeable, the orchestration adding cinematic flair as it drifts with a captivating emotive quality as each of these tales resonate majestically in different ways. Lyrically loosely a concept album about a fictitious coastal town with chapters about the town’s internal struggles, forbidden loves, maritime toil and faith, these cuts could as easily be about a broken relationship, you can take from the often heart breaking narrative what you wish.

As stunning, distinctive and beautiful as “Starlight And Ash” is, the absence of heavier moments which really made their 2020 self titled album something special is a bold and brave move. While listening to this album, long time fans will find themselves waiting for that echo of Progressive Death Metal or Black Metal tinged moments and they simply never come. It’s a strange absence because there are moments that threaten to burst into flame in cuts like “Star Altar” but the band pull back from the edge instead of letting go, continuing the dark melody with an avant-garde edge and slow burn. The change of direction maybe simply a case of what fits best for these songs or it maybe that this is the start of something entirely new, only time will tell. Majestic companion pieces “The Spring of 21” and “Just A Day” offer stunning piano arrangements from Dobber Beverly that deserve to be heard in fitting venues, the later offering a fuzzy Doom Metal tinge as it plays out, it’s higher tempo finale offering something with a little more bite than the rest of the material on show here. “House Of The Rising Sun” has been turned into a theatrical piece that feels like it would be at home with Les Misérables on the West End, the production is huge and the presentation is jaw dropping. As dark, vulnerable and troubled as anything Oceans Of Slumber have ever done, this represents something of a brave new World [8/10]

Track Listing