It’s tough to classify exactly what’s going on throughout Ogives Big Band and POHL‘s new split, largely because neither band seems particularly concerned about making music that is classifiable in a straightforward way. For most of the new split, which you can stream below, Ogives Big Band dwell in the low end, summoning up sharp doom, harsh sludge, tinges of psych rock, prog metal and even hints of metallic hardcore. They throw so many ideas out at once that you’re bound to like at least one!
POHL return fire with just one song, “Flayed Lord Prayer.” It’s long, cacophonous (is that a saxophone?) and full of sharp edges, while the underlying tension baked in continues to build and build to a satisfyingly-heavy climax.
“Will (Pohl) and I have known each other for many years,” Ogives Big Band guitarist Ben Harris tells Decibel. “I’ve been a fan of Pohl since they started. I wanted to release these four new tracks separately as they were going down a new path for us and some kind of collaborative project seemed more exciting than an EP. Both bands put out debut albums at around the same time, so I messaged Will to see if they were up for doing a split together and the timeline worked for them and they were super keen! Before writing anything I knew that I wanted things to be considerably heavier, to try and make use of space more and to have a more open kind of sound. There’s still some chops in there but they’re a little more covert! For the most part the songs were more intuitively written than before and I mostly jammed out the ideas in what turned out to be something like the final structures. Then tidied up the arrangements where bits were maybe pointing out awkwardly here and there. Things were further refined in the practice room with the rest of the band adding their parts. I also wanted to write stuff that would be easier and more fun to play live! This was the first time I was writing with the intent of leaving space specifically for vocals, which inevitably influences the arrangements and the shape of the songs in general.”
If you dig what you hear, you can grab the split below via Bandcamp and you can get tour date info here.
The post Full Album Stream: Ogives Big Band / POHL – “Split” appeared first on Decibel Magazine.
