With the project 'Octavarium' Swedish 'Mattias Ohlsson', the work of musical chronicler is slightly complex because, since its creation in October 2017, Mattias has already released 4 albums with icing on the cake, a double opus 'The Road' this which gives an impressive output frequency of one album every 3 months for more than 5 hours of listening !! (All albums are now available on Spotify). For my part, it was with the penultimate album 'Out of Time' released in August 2018 that I had discovered it and since then, a new opus has been available on Spotify at the end of 2018 and few months have been necessary to digest all this production. First of all, with such a project name, we should be in a well-known style, flirting with progressive metal influenced by large groups with, of course, first 'Dream Theater'. And, after a first listen, we are bathed in a patchwork of progressive influences with a rock component that seems to me more marked than the metal component. To be brief and not to inflict you all discography that must be discovered little by little, I will talk only about the last album 'Dystopia' which is a good summary of the whole and which seems to me even richer than the previous ones. First, the 10 tracks are linked to become one and we must wait until the end of 'Running Free' to have a little blank with 'Dystopia', the first 4 constituting a composition of more than 20 minutes in a very symphonic atmosphere where the central theme is used in each part in the same tone but with variations of rhythm and intensity. With 'Dystopia', it's a second part that starts to go to the end of the album for more than 50 minutes of listening and the whole brings a greater variety with more breaks between quiet parties and others more energetic as in the title 'Dystopia' which can recall 'Threshold' but we also find more 'Floydian' and therefore more atmospheric parts as in the magnificent 'Whispers on the Wind' with this magnificent guitar solo ( 4 minutes anyway !!) who grow in intensity to decrease on the end, the album ending on the 16 minutes of 'World Reborn' with a typic progressive rock title. In summary, with this discography already filled in a few months, the Swede 'Mattias Ohlsson' impresses us as much on the quantity as the quality because each album marks an evolution and 'Dystopia' is a step above the previous ones : for all amateurs and lovers of progressive rock, don’t wait too late to discover this new talent because it could well be that, given the very fast frequency of album releases, a new album arrives in the coming months... | |
