Ossimoro, Deus: Worshiping the Sun at Midnight
There’s a definite ‘90s vibe coursing through the second album, titled Deus, by hard-rocking Roman collective Ossimoro. Some of their strongest moments recall grunge greats like Alice in Chains or the brash dissonance of Helmet, but the novelty of the native-language vocals and an edge of desert influence puts Ossimoro in a category somewhere between heavy rock/doom and more straightforward hard fare. Deus, released in Europe on SG Records, is nine tracks/42 minutes of material which doesn’t seem diverse at first but actually runs across a range of sounds and approaches, displaying emotion in the vocals that’s palpable whether you speak Italian or not and a musical congruence befitting a band who have been playing together for eight years as Ossimoro have.
Deus gets off to a rough start with a 34-second intro that, by my estimation, doesn’t do much either to set the tone of the record or give the listener some idea of what Ossimoro are trying to do atmospherically. Fortunately, the band picks right the pace right up with “Deus ex Machina,” the closest thing to a title track we get and one of the more Kyuss-style songs on Deus. The guitars of Federico Venditti turn out to be a defining characteristic of Ossimoro; their thickness being a key factor in the band’s separating itself from the bulk of its influences. With the staccato riffage of “Splende il Fuoco” and the even more Page Hamilton-esque “Sierra” (also one of the stronger cuts on Deus), what chiefly gives the songs their musical distinction is the heaviness inherent in Venditti’s sound. The rhythm section of bassist Paolo Recchia and drummer Fabrizio Ferrante do an admirable job propelling that track and “Assassino,” making it clear that the middle of the album is also where the bulk of its best accomplishments lie, but there’s not necessarily much flash or technical showing off in their playing.
Since he hasn’t been mentioned yet, it’s worth giving special note to the vocals of Francesco Fornara, whose performance and knack for melody carries much of Deus. He seems well-suited to the more grounded, rocking material just as easily as the heavier moments, and some of the strongest sections Ossimoro here present are found when Fornara takes a multi-layered approach, harmonizing and near-harmonizing with himself à la the early days of Alice in Chains. The ending of “Sotto il Sole” is especially effective because of his arrangement, and all the better a lead-in for “Il Sole a Mezzanotte,” where he gives another sampling of his approach on a somewhat darker track musically. The only trouble plaguing Deus as regards the vocals is they’re too high in the mix. It’s as though the album was given a traditional hard rock mix, where what it would really benefit from is allowing Venditti’s guitars, and even more so Recchia’s bass, to stand up more (Recchia lays down a few excellent lines under a Venditti solo in “Il Sole a Mezzanote” and it just makes me long for more of that throughout the other songs) and not be so overpowered by the vocals. If Fornara’s performance weren’t as capable as it is, it would be a real issue with Deus, but it’s hard to complain too much about good singing.
“Il Culto” is a late-album highlight, among the catchier of the chorus-driven songs on the album, and a decent musical summary of what Ossimoro have to offer musically. The closer, “Ceneri,” returns to the start-stop guitar and rhythms, opening for an accessible chorus that’s another example of Ossimoro’s strength in the area of traditional rock songwriting. Neither it nor Deus as a whole are mind-blowingly individual, but both have much to offer the curious rocker looking for something with less of a mind toward fitting into either this or that subset of heavy rock. Ossimoro seem much less concerned about being “doom” than they do about writing Ossimoro songs, in other words, and it works greatly to their benefit on their second album. Deus feels like it’s almost where Ossimoro wants it to be. With some more layering from Fornara and an overall more fitting mix, they could be on the verge of creating something really special and completely their own.
Tags: Italy, Ossimoro, Rome, SG Records
