Oceans Of Sadness "For We Are" CD

The very idea of goth-infused melodeath, as natural as the combination might be at first glance, is uncomfortably similar to AIDS-injected melanoma in nature. Before hearing this album, I would bet actual money on the results of such a perverse combination being diabolically awful, nay, redefining the very concept of terrible, shitty music to a Lovecraftian dimension where the horror can't be described, you can only assure a listener that it's very horrifying indeed.
Then I heard this album and what do you know, it's pretty tight.
Calling this 'just' gothic melodeath isn't an entirely accurate depiction of this sort of thing, though it gets the general idea of incredibly poppy, almost painfully accessible metal across well enough. There's substantial influence from mid-era Dimmu Borgir as well, a bit of symphonic black metal here and maybe a bit of Iron Maiden there; you know, just about any influence that could be found in the metal realm which in combination would form a completely vile concoction. Really though, much in the Angry Beavers formula of 'stinky + stinky = not stinky', combining shit with shit has sort of forced the hand of all the genres involved, creating a combination that is, on the whole, not at all displeasing. Perhaps the natural poppiness of all the involved genres it what makes it; the avoidance of more incongruous genre decisions manages to allow the band to avoid some more serious artistic missteps, and while the result cannot in any way be called great art, it's an intensely satisfying and fun listening experience despite its overbearing homosexuality.
Ironically, the combination of goth and melodeath ends up sounding like a slightly abrasive variety of power metal most of the time; there's a lot of speedy riffing over accelerated rock/double bass drumming with 'soaring' clean vocals (since the vocalist's standard register is somewhere in the area of grinding tectonic plates, it can't soar too high). Keyboards are used pretty heavily alongside dueling lead guitars, and the overall sense of melody is not at all far removed from what one might hear on an average Evergrey album. More surprisingly than anything is that it really works for being a slightly abrasive variety of power metal; the riffs and vocals are extraordinarily catchy most of the time, and the small intrusions of more extreme genres (sporadic unclean vocals, occasional black metal-esque riffing) helps vary things when they're getting slow.
Of course, another attempt at variation in the form of weepy ballad tracks doesn't fair quite as well. Hilariously enough, these songs (and there are plenty of them, and plenty of occasions within the more metallic songs that go in a similar direction) sound greatly like the soft moments of Kamelot's 'The Black Halo'; they're all based around trickling piano lines and overly sincere, rumbling vocals. They're not terribly composed, but they're laughable enough to damage my opinion of the album as a whole; I guess I should be thankful that, stemming from genres like goth metal and melodeath, there aren't more of them, but that doesn't make them any better.
Despite minor setbacks like that one, though, this is completely surprising in just how good it manages to be against all odds. It's a bit overlong for its own good, but the production is flawless and the songwriting is more or less very strong throughout the entirety of the album, so I'm willing to forgive some of the band's weepier indiscretions just because they've achieved the impossible: made an actually decent album out of two of the absolute dumbest things in metal.

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