OJM Post Full Reunion Set From Venezia Hardcore Fest 2022
Italian heavy rockers OJM took the stage at the Sept. 2022 Venezia Hardcore Fest playing alongside the likes of Dropdead, The Flex, Melt and Big Cheese, and a respectably aggressive slew of others. They also just played the Go Down Records-associated Maximum Festival 2023 in April, and you’re right, this April is more recent than last Fall, but the full set of the Venice show has been posted by the band and it’s all the more of an occasion since it was a special gig in celebration of their 25th anniversary performed as a reunion of the lineup that featured on 2006’s Under the Thunder.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but OJM belong to the class of ’00s-era European underground heavy rockers who did the thing before the mobilization of social media as an ecosystem for bands. Playing in a heavy desert style, OJM was the kind of band you’d hear about on StonerRock.com, or maybe you picked up their records at All That is Heavy like I did. Their most recent full-length was 2010’s Volcano (review here), which means that for 13 years of their quarter-century tenure, they haven’t had a record out. True, it hasn’t been a complete absence, as 2021’s Live at Rocket Club (review here) was a definitive sign of life, but their activity has been almost exclusively live since Volcano, the 18th anniversary compilation 18 (discussed here) that came out in — hang on, doing math — 2015 notwithstanding.
But that comp came with word that the band was taking a long break, and that’s how it’s gone since. I don’t know what their forward plans are, if anything, but vocalist David Martin, guitarist Alessandro Tedesco, bassist Andrew Pozzy and drummer Massimo “Max Ear” Recchia hit it hard enough in this clip that while they’d still definitely be a standout on any bill calling itself a hardcore fest — since, you know, they’re not a hardcore band — they did have a mosh going in front of the stage, people getting up and stage-diving off, and all that sort of happens-at-gigs-when-not-everyone-is-60-yet types of things. Not ragging on old people shows at all, by the way. If you need me, I’ll be in back looking for a chair.
I’ve included the stream of OJM‘s Under the Thunder below as hoisted from their Bandcamp. The fact of the matter is an entire generation of heavy rock’s audience has come to prominence since the last time OJM released an album, and I’m hoping that maybe one or two people will take the chance here to go back and listen to this one, or maybe their Beard of Stars-issued 2002 debut, Heavy (discussed here), or anything else on there, since the bottom line is they were a band worth knowing then and they remain one now. And if I didn’t hint at it strong enough, I’ll say outright that I’d love to hear what these guys could do on a new full-length. Maybe next year. Maybe not.
If you can dig it, then by all means, dig it:
OJM, Live at Venezia Hardcore Fest 2022
LINE UP
DAVID MARTIN – vocals
MAX EAR – drums
ANDREW POZZY – bass
ALESSANDRO TEDESCO – guitar
