Released: 2001
...And Oceans was never been a band to go for simple album titles, and this one has perhaps the the most contrived. Whatever it is supposed to mean, Am God, by which is it thankfully better known, is an interesting and diverse album of extreme blackened metal that was a logical progression from 1999's sublime The Symmetry of I - The Circle of O. Rarely were they known to shrink back from a little experimentation either, and this CD is no exception.
...And Oceans built grand, often epic songs using straight forward death metal riffs, grim vocals and frequent bursts of tumultuous black metal intensity, and this is certainly the case here. On this album however, it is the keyboards that are the real star of the show, providing a starkly futuristic feel in their spacey, otherworldliness that displays the kind of initiative that is missing from many other recent releases. At times they almost possess the character of deep trance techno, but it's only ever used to enhance ...And Oceans' otherwise aggressive sound and help to create the dramatic atmosphere oozing from tracks like ‘Postfuturistika' and ‘White Synthetic Noise'. That's with the exception of the last track, ‘New Model World', which actually is deep trance techno! This is of course caused all sorts of consternation and hand-wringing when the usual metal crowd got a load of it, with whining and whingeing about ...And Oceans going the way of Theatre of Tragedy, and while they did go further into the electronic area they never got close to being as lame as that band.
Am God is nothing less than a boldly experimental volume of progressive extreme metal and a frightfully good one at that.
- Intelligence is Sexy
- White Synthetic Noise
- Tears Have No Name
- Espirit de Corps
- Odious & Devious
- Of Devilish Tongues
- Postfuturistika
- TBA in a Silver Box
- New Model World
Rating: 92%
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