OPHIDIAN I is a Technical Death Metal band from Iceland. "Desolate" is the group's second full length album, released by Season of Mist on July 16, 2021.

What happens when you cross MORBID ANGEL and CARCASS with STEVE VAI and DRAGONFORCE? You get OPHIDIAN I. This album is full of major-sounding chord progressions, harmonized guitar solos, and so much shredding that you can already picture the clichéd image of the long-haired guitar player blazing across the fretboard as an off-camera fan blows with just the right amount of force to allow his mane to flow majestically behind him. I'll give these guys credit - this certainly isn't when I think of when I think of Technical Death Metal. The problem is, I'm not sure that I like it so much.

Why don't I like it? For me, the "technical" part of Technical Death Metal is not manifested in the shredding skills of the lead guitar players, necessarily. Chuck Schuldiner was not a shredder like Joe Satriani. The technicality of DEATH, for example, lay in the amount of riffs the band could fit in the space of a single song, not to mention all the tempo changes, time signature changes, and key changes that went along with all of those riffs. Plus, one of the most disappointing things about this band is that it feels like the bassist and drummer had a less important role in shaping the songs than the guitarists did. This feels less like a band such as DEATH where (even though Chuck Schuldiner wrote all the music) the other band members played an important role in the sound of the different songs, and more like the backing band for Michael Angelo Batio if one day he decided to play Death Metal.

Additionally, in my opinion the riffs just are not that great. There are, of course, exceptions. The devastation knows no bounds on tracks like "Enslaved In A Desolate Swarm," "Captive Infinity," and the middle part of "Sequential Descent." However, songs like "Diamonds," "Spiral To Oblivion," and "Dominion Eyes" focus more on making chord progressions than riffs - and by the way, they are commonly used chord progressions at that. If there was some originality in the progressions, I might be interested. Sadly, this is not the case.

Overall, this album is okay. Obviously, the production is solid, and the musicianship is incredibly tight, but as I've mentioned several times before, those two factors alone will not make your album good. My advice to OPHIDIAN I: when you focus on the riffs instead of the tried-and-true shred guitar formulas, you get really good results. Do that more on your next album.