Album Review: Osyron – Foundations

We regaled you with Osyron’s video for “The Ones Below” back in June, and now the full album is out it would be remiss of us now to fill you in on the other four tracks (five if you get the bonus number, too).

“Progressive symphonic power metal” is quite the mouthful, and quite the claim, but by the time you’re a minute into opener “The Cross” Osyron have already ticked all the boxes. With a fist-pumping/thigh-punching beat to match that of a Sabaton song, they are however darker in tone than the Swedes.

Bass twangs pop out of the swirling background music in “Ignite” (which you can check out below), which has more of that sporadic prog feel. Again, despite the tempo changes and full-on musical barrage, Osyron maintain a steady rhythm throughout which makes the song quite catchy. This is something obvious throughout the album and it says a lot about the production.

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Every song has a huge amount going on at the same time. At points, it can almost be like two songs being played over each other, more like freeform jazz than most metal, but the listener’s attention is dragged back and forth seemingly by design. What this really does is give the album longevity. You won’t catch it all on a first listen – you really need to go through it a few times to appreciate everything, by which time you know the songs and you’re enjoying it on a different level.

As stated earlier, there are only 5 (or 6) tracks on here, but you do get value for money with “Battle of the Thames” (a surprisingly good acoustic-based number) hitting 7 minutes, and the title track passing 8 minutes. With songs varying from the epic “Foundations” to the bouncy (the previously-mentioned single/video “The Ones Below”) and even a de facto national anthem with “O Canada”, this really is an interesting spread of styles.

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Foundations is genuinely unlike anything I’ve heard before and it’s had me going back for multiple listens precisely for this reason. The musicianship and songwriting are of high quality, but it’s the production that really sells it.

Foundations is out now

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