OKULAR Sexforce

One of this years most anticipated albums, at least for me personally, is finally here. With their debut album ´Probiotic´Norwegian technical death metal band Okular delivered one of the most exciting extreme metal albums I´ve heard in a while. My expectations to ´Sexforce´were therefore sky high, which of course can be a very dangerous approach to a new album but fortunately Andreas Aubert and the guys didn´t disappoint me this time either. Like it´s predecessor ´Sexforce´is a very complex and demanding album that takes a while to get into and therefore I´ve played the album a lot more than I normally would do before judging it. Like I just said the music is very complex, maybe even more complex than on ´Probiotic´, but for some reason it´s also more accessible than the debut. The material is very varied, with some really technical songs, some more straight forward onces and others again are more melodic and atmospheric in it´s structure. ´The king of life´for instance is a strange song in itself with only acoustic guitars with extreme vocals on top, but it fits perfectly into the overall atmosphere of the album. That is actually one of the main strengths of Okular, the ability to make such different songs sound so consistent together. There are a few interesting and successful guest appearances on this album as well. Vintersorg contributes with vocals on the track ´The Greatest Offender´, which by the way is one of my personal favorites on ´Sexforce´. Andre Aaslie of Gromth delivers some really tasteful piano and orchestral parts while Athera of Susperia shares the lead vocal duties with Marius Skarsem Pedersen on six of the twelve tracks. To sum everything up I would say that ´Sexforce´feels like a very natural progress from the debut, and it shows an even more confident and mature band both when it comes to performance and composing. Andreas Aubert deserves credit for his ability to think out of the box when composing songs, Okular sound refreshingly different to more or less anything out there but at the same time the material is sufficient accessible to appeal to most fans of technical extreme metal. Another impressing effort from one of the most exciting bands Norway has to offer.

Discography:

´Sexforce´2013

´Probiotic´2011