You ever feel like the world is kind of a dick about genres? Think about the book publishing industry, for example. When you walk into your local bookstore, notice the specialized sections for so-called “genre fiction” – things like horror, mystery, sci-fi, romance – versus the more respectable catch-all “Fiction.” On the one hand, having a more targeted section might help connect authors with the readers most likely to be interested. On the other hand, there’s an implicit suggestion that genre fiction isn’t Serious Fiction Written By Serious People.
Of course, the word ‘genre’ is related (through Latin – genus – and eventually French) to the word ‘generic.’ In typical usage, we imagine “generic” to be an insult, to denote something utterly vapid and unoriginal. And yet, at its root, to be generic means simply to be “of a particular kind.” Sometimes we want to reach for a specific genre or style of story precisely because we are seeking a particular kind of feeling or experience, and it’s of course (hi, hello, this is my point) the same with music.
The Spanish band Onirophagus (a Latin term which almost certainly does not mean “onomatopoeia for the sound you make when a bug flies into your mouth”) returns to a perfect exercise in genre on their self-assured third album, Revelations from the Void. The genre through which Onirophagus moves is doom/death of a stolidly classicist variety – never quite as somberly funereal as Evoken nor as sickly humid as dISEMBOWELMENT, and not again quite as stately and decrepit as prime Peaceville Three, yet with night-dark elements of each.
These five lengthy songs are often focused on slight transitions between slowly lumbering aggression and patiently melancholy twin guitar melodies, though one element that stands out from the typical doom/death palette is vocalist Paingrinder’s frequent recourse to a stentorian bellow. He sounds like a cloaked and dyspeptic shepherd wandering some King Lear-esque thunderstorm, standing atop a craggy cliff and belting after his wayward sheep: “GEEEEEEET YE FECKS THE FECK INSIIIIIIIIIIIDE.” This, I should add, is a good thing.
If you’re looking to Revelations from the Void to be some Very Serious elbow-patched National Book Award short-lister, you might want to keep browsing. But if you’re in the mood for a brand-new doom/death book with a very familiar cover, you could do a lot worse than to cozy up with Onirophagus.