I have a guilty love of almost any genre with the word "post" in front of it.  There is just something about the atmosphere that the genres usually create and the deep tension that can be harboured through the use of the instruments. With that in mind, the debut album from OECIST is a bit of an enigma to me.

It has all the trimmings of a great instrumental album and has clearly been crafted with care and a hefty amount of talent. The album opens with a great industrial sound and almost immediately has a strong air of CULT OF LUNA about it. I guess it is here that it essentially fell flat for me as I have come to expect so much from this kind of music that it is pretty easy for me to feel let down if it doesn't deliver. It feels like all of the ingredients are there but the only thing missing is that depth that makes instrumental music so interesting. The guitar work is brilliant and the riffs and melodies are well matched throughout the album. The songs flow so organically into each other that it is difficult to spot the segway between tracks. The aforementioned lack of depth is noticeable when you start to look at how the songs feel deep down. One of the things I love most about Post-Rock is the expert use of dynamics to build thee kind of tension that makes you almost ready to explode by the crescendo. This is missing within this album and the songs just kind of keep rolling on through the same levels and only have brief moments of this raw emotive energy that makes this kind of music so special.

I don't just want to slate it though as I think this is a genuinely good album and it is definitely one that I could listen to on my walk into work each day. As it's quite short and the tracks do pretty much meld into each other, I'm going to keep this review fairly small. Overall, this is a good album but for serious fans of deep atmospheric Post-anything music, it may not tickle the taste buds as much as they want.