Owls Over Oaks – O. O. O.
- Dark Juan
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Released by: Argonauta Records
Release Date: 27.02.26
Running Time: 39:23
Review by Dark Juan
Score: 9/10
It is a sad and sorrowful time at Crow Cottage. The last of the original canine Triumvirate of Terror left us earlier this week. Hodgson went peacefully and surrounded by love and for this Dark Juan is thankful. Mrs Dark Juan is utterly inconsolable and so am I. He has now joined the pantheon of very good bois and is in the company of the mighty Zeus and the pocket rocket Igor. Hopefully, and this is coming from Dark Juan as an atheist, there is a glorious and happy afterlife for my dogs where I get to see them all again. Because if they just die then that is truly shit and I will be kicking whatever deity or fallen angel I end up justifying myself to squarely in the metaphysical bollocks and fuck the consequences.
Listening to Italian Extreme Funereal Drone and Doom is probably not going to help my sorrow at this time, but I have had the debut album from Owls Over Oaks sitting in my library for some time and it’s frankly about time I pick myself up from the loch’s worth of alcohol I have consumed and the veritable mountain of party treats I have also imbibed and do some fucking work. Kummerspeck does not even come close to describing the amount of stuff that is bad for me I have ingested over the past week. Time to drag out the Platter of Splatter ™…
This is irrelevant, though. Owls Over Oaks are from Turin and are a three-piece band playing Extreme Funereal Drone and Doom with zero guitars, two basses and a vocalist who appears to have no form of speech or syllabification and communicates entirely in guttural roaring and incoherent rumbling. This is by no means a bad thing. “O. O. O.” is the debut album from these Italian psychopaths and is meant to be the first part of a trilogy of albums. It should be said now that I am not going to review this record based on whether or not it has songs per se, but rather as a total immersion product as Dark Juan feels that this is what OOO are aiming for – think an even more subterranean Thorr’s Hammer or Sunn O))) for what I mean.
The tracks are simply named after the band and frankly three fucking tracks clocking in at almost FORTY minutes makes for a mouthwatering prospect for the Doom loving pervert that is Dark Juan. Opening track ‘OWLS’ is easily the most accessible of the three on this album, but please bear in mind that the term “accessible” should be used in its loosest terms. This is not music for people looking for a quick blast before they go and do something fun. It is heavily sedated, thunderous and murderous sorrow dragging itself painfully along in a black sun world that has shattered glass for deserts and nothing around you for 40 miles. It is the very epitome of Doom. It is wasteland music for post-apocalyptic survivors in a scorched and burning hellscape where even the act of breathing shortens your lifespan appreciably. The lack of any guitars on the record offers an interesting new take on Doom and Drone insofar that there are no shimmering parts, no shining moments of joy or melody creeping through the misery. It is just despair, endless low-end despair and the draining of the last vestiges of hope, punctuated by the growling and roaring of things in the shadows which are unseen but predatory.
That’s only the first track and that’s the one that people are going to understand with the most ease.
‘OVER’ is not as easy to describe or gain insight to, as it knocks back the Doom component of the music and increases the Drone… If ‘OWLS’ was slow, ‘OVER’ is fucking glacial. Repeating patterns of varying degrees of complexity ebb and flow throughout a ten-minute piece that is painful to listen to in places, such is the wide-eyed and spittle-flecked intensity of the performance. It is single-minded in the way that only a true psychopath can be, megalomanic and tunnel-visioned on the goal of destroying everything around it by sheer force of low-end harmonic Armageddon. There is no pretence at beauty or subtlety here. There is only raw, untrammelled power from an entity with three heads and a really misanthropic attitude towards humankind. The vocals again remain utterly unhinged and howl, roar and gabble incessantly from all directions at once (some masterful… er… mastering from James Plotkin adding Marianas Trench depths of sound to the music) and the whole experience is like being slowly shaken to pieces by plate tectonics caused by targeted nuclear detonations.
‘OAKS’ however, combines Drone and Doom in a devastatingly effective package that is absolutely overwhelming and dare I say it, becomes almost Industrial in parts with the repeating movements and machine-like, steamhammer drumming, but this is broken up with some beauty at last from some clean, clear vocals from Elisa “Aeretica” Iacopini, which switch the dynamic from endless warfare over increasingly scarce resources to the kind of heartbroken that feels like someone is twisting a knife deep in your internal organs. That, however, does not last long and the band return to the Stygian horrors of earlier in the record where the endless torture of heavily distorted bass and drawn-out passages of peine forte a dure return and inchoate screaming ad roaring of Hell is all you can hear around you. ‘OAKS’ benefits in other ways, however. It is well known that Dark Juan appreciates experimentation and improvisation, and this track has those qualities in abundance. The best allegory I can think of to describe it is like the story of a wounded hero and the pauses between battles while they recover, all the horror and pain stitched across their face as the flesh knits slowly back together and they struggle to find surcease even in the throes of their suffering. And then they are sent back into the meat grinder by spit and polish rear echelon motherfuckers who are never going to see combat…
So, not an uplifting listen, it is fair to say. The combination of two basses and no guitars gives the music a thick, cloying quality, sticky and clinging to your skin and burning where it touches, and there being no relief from this. It is dark and uncompromising and murderous and deeply misanthropic. It will not surprise you to learn that Dark Juan fucking loves it. Over to the Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System:
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (Il sistema brevettato di classificazione degli schizzi di sangue di Dark Juan, per i miei cari amici italiani. Spero che stiate tutti bene e che la vita vi tratti con gentilezza, ma seriamente, cosa diavolo vi prende se il vostro splendido Paese può produrre orrori musicali come Owls Over Oaks? Vivete in una terra di sole, storia e bellezza e questo tipo di inferno è ciò che vi inventate? Mio dio! Sono fottutamente terrorizzato da tutti voi!) awards Owls Over Oaks 9/10 for a record that is, for all it is slower than a granny in a supermarket, remains resonant and thrilling, with lots of twists to keep you occupied.
TRACKLISTING:
OWLS
OVER
OAKS
LINE-UP:
Valerio “Leynir” Possetto – Vocals, both bass guitars
Elisa “Aeretica” Iacopini – Vocals
Roberto “Bob Rip” Ripollino – Drums
LINKS:
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