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.

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