OSI is another one of those \u201csupergroups\u201d\u2014and while I hate that term being bandied about for every time four guys get bored with their groups and make another group, this one deserves it. The brainchild of Jim Matheos (longtime guitarist for Fates Warning) and one of my favorite progressive metal artists, Kevin Moore (the original keyboardist for Dream Theater and the sole driving force behind the superlative Chroma Key), OSI has also included at various times Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater), Joey Vera (Armored Saint and Fates Warning), Gavin Harrison (Porcupine Tree), the late Sean Malone (Cynic and Gordian Knot), Mikael Akerfeldt (Opeth), and Tim Bowness (No-Man, one of Porcupine Tree\u2019s Steven Wilson\u2019s side projects). If this is not enough musical chops for you, you\u2019d probably complain that there wasn\u2019t enough star power in USA For Africa.<\/p>\n
OSI has had four albums to date; at some point, I\u2019m going to get to all of them. I\u2019m starting with the first one I was turned on to, 2009\u2019s Blood<\/i>.<\/p>\n
With this lineup, you would think that OSI would be a progressive metal act\u2014and you\u2019d be mostly wrong. Their sensibilities are more in classic prog; there\u2019s some Floyd and King Crimson going on here, but it\u2019s leavened sensibly with Moore\u2019s more ambient\/trance sound and the precision of prog metal. I find a lot of classically styled prog to be muddy and meandering. OSI is neither.<\/p>\n
For starters, there\u2019s Moore\u2019s vocals (he handles almost all the vocals on Blood<\/i>). His voice is eerie, sometimes almost monotone, and has a certain alien quality that means there\u2019s a detached step between delivery and impact. It\u2019s never jarring or unpleasant, but after a time it seems to induce a musical dichotomy that really suits OSI.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not to say, however, that OSI is all mellow and dreamy and such. Songs like \u201cFalse Start,\u201d \u201cStockholm,\u201d and \u201cBe My Hero\u201d emphatically remind you that one of two roots of the band is metal; Matheos lets loose with some crunchy guitar and the mad drum fills are thunderous. \u201cWe Come Undone\u201d shades into Radiohead territory, but without Radiohead\u2019s pretentious precociousness. \u201cBlood\u201d wouldn\u2019t sound out of place on a Tool album, except Moore\u2019s vocals are so cool and remote that there\u2019s a striking dissonance between the message and the delivery. <\/p>\n
On the other hand, I can\u2019t say I warmed to the instrumental-with-vocal-samples \u201cMicroburst Alert\u201d; it just seemed a lot more disjointed than the rest of Blood<\/i>. \u201cChristian Brothers\u201d sounds like a rejected Soundgarden song. And \u201cNo Celebrations\u201d guest vocalist Tim Bowness sounds way too much like Neil Tennant (Pet Shop Boys) for me to think it works here.<\/p>\n
Did I like Blood<\/i>? In the end, it was mostly hits with a few notable misses. I would recommend it for fans of prog or prog-metal, but it may be a bit too much for others to take in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":34600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10779],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-46449","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-osi","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46449"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}