Owdwyr – Receptor
Owdwyr – Receptor
Self-Released
Release Date: 20/10/23
Running Time: 40:09
Review by Dark Juan
434,909,568,122,989,775,666/10
Good afternoon, dear friends of all genders! I am Dark Juan and I write things. Most of them make no sense, yet there are thousands of you around the world who read my words. For that, I thank you profusely. Without writing about music, the Devil would certainly make work for my idle hands and there are many ways for me to create mayhem and mischief, and there are only so many hours that the extremely rock and roll activity of aeromodelling can pass before you get tired of being covered in glue and Mr. Hobby aqueous acrylics. However, being as I am now of a certain age, experience has taught me the value of fucking well behaving myself and being a good little soldier so that means you basically must put up with me on a semi-regular basis.
You poor people. Just imagine how much of a pain in the arse I am to the rest of the Ever-Metal.com team. You lot have it easy compared to poor Beth and Simon. And Mrs Dark Juan. She has to live with me as well as put up with whatever records I am reviewing, and (Shock! Horror! She is not into metal, being as she is into Grunge and Southern Gothic and Aurora) frequently must put up with a lot of noise and spasmodic jerking around the lounge, which also upsets the dogs, which is normally the time when I invent some errand I have to run and leave the home and the aftermath of what mayhem I have created…
The Platter Of Splatter™ is oscillating speedily, unleashing the full Technical Death Metal fury of Owdwyr upon your unsuspecting correspondent, who, it has to be said, was still looking for his face after The Machinist blew it clean off. Owdwyr have flayed the flesh from the bones of Dark Juan’s skull leaving the bone picked clean and Dark Juan no longer needing moisturizer.
“Receptor”, being Owdwyr’s DEBUT album (!) opens with a piece of music written and played on the keyboard, which promptly lures the listener into a false sense of security, thinking you might have some high-class rock and roll to enjoy.
Fuck, no.
Instead, you have ‘The Liminal Carapace’, which is one of the most complex pieces of music that Dark Juan has ever heard. Owdwyr layer counterpoint upon counterpoint, and fracture polyrhythms and microtones until the poor abused meat computer in Dark Juan’s head can’t cope with the sophistication of the music and it has now devolved into some kind of primordial soup. Dark Juan is literally seated here in Crow Cottage, saliva dripping from his chin, slack-jawed and utterly crushed, having lost the power of speech and syllabification. This music, man… The rest of the album is the same. There are no standout songs because every single composition on this album is so absolutely eclectic and complicated that it is impossible to quantify with Dark Juan’s limited musical experience. This band have discovered the musical Holy Grail – brutality, staggering intelligence and the most extreme musical chops combine to produce something that is absolutely fucking transcendent.
It’s not often Dark Juan can find nothing to criticise, but Owdwyr’s extreme metal convergence of Tech Death, Prog, and Grind framed around a Classical core hits every single pleasure centre Dark Juan has and a few more that I didn’t know about to render me a twitching, spent, senseless mess on the floor of the lounge. Even the drum sound is good.
‘Ripped From The Bog’ is another work of insanity – the most primal of Death Metal (special mention to the gutturals of Max Lichtman here – the man must have a throat composed of tectonic plates and lava) fuses itself with hyper-accurate Jazz stylings and the kind of blastbeats that would not be out of place on a Morrisound-era DM record. ‘Stench Of Indemnity’ throws a subtle background of electronics into the mix as well as they prowl and snarl beneath the mega-complex music and time signatures whereas ‘Lagos’ references Djent as well as serious Prog influences as well. There’s even chamber fucking piano on ‘Ein’ as well as a super Trad Metal twin guitar attack, there’s even little hints of Ghost-like melody beneath the aural apocalypse – it’s as if the band have gone to the local record shop to get inspiration while wired on every single psychedelic drug they could cram into their systems, not consulted with each other, and come back with music from Bach, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Radiohead and Ten Years After, looked at each other, and simply said, “Fuck it, we can play all of it”, necked a gram of Billy each and then hit the studio. “Receptor” is the result of rampant psychedelic and amphetamine abuse and people who clearly have the intelligence to be running the world playing music together. Yet again, Dark Juan is awed by the immense talent of a band and now regards his terrible attempts at being a guitarist and musician shameful. I’d commit hara-kiri, but that would deny you all the pleasure of my company and we can’t have that. Also, I have requested a lot of records from the review list and Simon and Beth would call in a Voodoo practitioner and have me resurrected and zombified, trapped in a room with only a word processor and an endless list of records to write about.
Jesus fucking Christ in a chariot driven sidecar. Owdwyr are the band Meshuggah wish they were, but now Owdwyr have a significant problem. If they have created a magnum opus now, as Dark Juan considers they have, where the fuck do they go from here? You simply cannot cram any more complexity into the dense, overpowering sound of Owdwyr. It will be the death of the universe. You would have to invent new musical notes or risk obliteration…
Which is what Dark Juan has been by Owydwyr. Absolutely obliterated. A greasy puddle on the floor is all that is left of your favourite ersatz Hellpriest and rapporteur.
It was fun while it lasted, though.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System has been absolutely annihilated by Owdwyr and requires a complete repair and overhaul as the scoring systems are now absolutely fucked. All the valves and circuits need replacing because they only go up to 10 but Owdwyr have scored 434,909,568,122,989,775,666/10 and totally fucked up Dark Juan’s Top 10 list for 2023…
TRACKLISTING:
01. Praefatio
02. The Liminal Carapace
03. Ripped from The Bog
04. Stench of Indemnity
05. Lagos
06. Ein
07. Writhe
08. Supplicant
09. Reverie
10. Cower
11. A Vessel Emerges
12 Not Afraid
13. Pitchtongue Vesper
14. Catalyst Sequence
15. The Sputtering Torch
LINE-UP:
Paul Plumeri Jr. – Guitars, composition, and programming
Chris Williams – Bass
Max Lichtman – Vocals and Lyrics
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
