Though Skin Age is a crowning masterpiece, I prefer Odious' debut, Mirror of Vibrations, to its mature and focused successor. Given the significan gap of time between the two and the fact that only Bassem Fakhri stuck it out, you can expect a correspondingly large difference in sound and style.
Mirror of Vibrations is far more metallic in nature, favouring guitars over the keys and oriental elements, which gives it a nice punch. The only really mellow pieces here are the intro "Silver Sea" and keyboard outro "Dilemma," although all of the songs usually feature some foray into oriental instrumentation and shifts in tempo. One good example of this are the 4:33-5:42 of "Poems Hidden Black Walls," where the keys play a bit of a mosaic of notes and some ethnic drumming joins in under a guitar melody. "For the Unknown is Horrid" starts with a super catchy, Oriental riff that feels a bit off, but makes more sense with repeated listens. There's an awesome guitar solo in that song as well that later melds with some woodwind instrument...super cool.
Mirror of Vibrations is a very tight album, much moreso than a lot of the other bands of this nature. Sahara by Orphaned Land seems really clunky in comparison, whereas Odious come across as naturals. "Invitation to Chaotic Revelations" starts off with a sandstorm of blastbeats only to quickly be interrupted with a melody played on the oud and some native percussion, that evolves into another wall of black metal destruction. "Smile in Vacuum Warnings" has a really epic section before the song even reaches the halfway mark, and alternates between chugging, blasting, and more melodic picking with absolute precision.
The sound and overall style is not unlike Nocturnal Mortum's early output if you swapped the Ukrainian folk elements out for Oriental folk elements (and ditched the extremely questionable ideology). It wouldn't surprise me to find that they used the same solid state amps, drum machine/electric kit that those Ukrainians had. Bassem uses a more black metal rasp on here, but occassionally dips down into his super deathly roar, much like Knjaz Varggoth. This is very much a black metal album, and the production values leave no doubt about that.
This is probably the best debut album of any band from the Middle East, in spite of its rough sound. More Oriental than Melechesh's Al Intisar, better composed than Orphaned Land's Sahara and Litham's Dhal Ennar, and more metal than Nawather's Treasure Chest, Mirror of Vibrations delivers everything you'd want in obscure metal from an exotic locale.
Sample: youtube.com/watch?v=K5r_DDo-cBs
Sample: youtube.com/watch?v=ABEBoGB431g
Sample: youtube.com/watch?v=5BeHW5Qmy_E
