The Waste of Space Orchestra — Syntheosis
Syntheosis was a piece commissioned by the organisers of the Roadburn festival that was performed at the festival in its entirety in 2018. This release is a studio recording of that setlist, featuring a whopping ten-man lineup. The record label describes it as a “challenging, engaging psych metal record” or as a nine-part concept album concerned with three beings, The Shaman voiced by guitarist/vocalist Vesa Ajomo, The Seeker, played by Juho Varnhanen, and finally The Possessor, portrayed by Marko Neuman. The three beings are sucked through a portal into an alien dimension “populated by brain-mutilating colour storms and ego-diminishing audio violence”, when they meld their minds into a single collective consciousness to achieve equipoise.
The album is a genuine tour de force of psychedelic black metal. A symphonic genre shifting collision of musical styles that encompasses psychedelia, black metal, doom metal and progressive rock. After the instrumental opening track Void Monolith, the album kicks into gear with The Shamanic Vision, an eclectic uptempo masterpiece, showcasing the band’s sonic diversity as black metal vocals fit seamlessly alongside music that ranges widely from psychedelic doom riffery to black metal style blast beats and beyond. This is a great way to get things underway. The Seeker’s Reflection is up next, dominated by some Celtic Frost style riffs, this is one of my favourite tracks on the album. A good solid slab of Tom Warrior worship never goes wrong to my ears. Journey to the Centre of Mass is a slightly off the wall epic that runs for over ten minutes, dominated in its early stage by drums and bass the music steadily begins to build, becoming more and more psychedelic as it progresses. By the track’s midpoint it is fairly entrenched in Ozric Tentacles territory. The hypnotic beats grow faster and faster before the song finally erupts with a heavy doom ladened riff and vocals that sound like they were vomited up from hell.
The album’s middle track is Wake up the Possessor which opens with an off-kilter tune that is somewhat reminiscent of Alice Cooper’s Years Ago/Steven before taking on a more typical black metal style for the remainder of the track’s length. Infinite Gate Opening starts to build slowly as synth drones and drums join the opening chants, which keep coming as the song builds before it all crashes back down again before Vacuum Head pummels the listener with its driving heavy, bass beat, like Lemmy playing fast, heavy, psychedelic tinged metal. The Universal Eye takes a completely different road to the rest of the album, atmospheric and creepy, this dark ambient piece represents a complete change of pace and style, but it sounds great and works well in preparing the listener for the album’s mammoth finale, Syntheosis, a thirteen minute symphony that takes in all of the band’s many and varied influences, melding them into a heavy blackened doom metal track with monolithic guitar riffs that Sunn O))) would be proud of. After five minutes the whole thing breaks down into a soft psychedelic middle section that takes the listener a little by surprise, this is followed by the return of that punishing doom metal riff from the first part of the song, only this time things are even more intense. This time the riff is even more crushing than before. Eventually the track slowly fades away leaving the listener in an emotional heap.
Overall, this is a great album, produced by musicians at the top of their game who seem to be driving one another on to create something spectacular and crushing. It’s epic, brutal, diverse and above all else brilliant. If you like your black metal to be a little more experimental, or you like your psychedelia to be a lot heavier, then this will definitely float your boat. One of the most interesting albums of the year for me, in fact I would say one of the most interesting albums of its type I’ve heard in many a year