Born Of Osiris — The Simulation (Review)

I’ll admit that I’m a bit of a sucker for some good Djent. Born Of Osiris’ 2011 album The Discovery is a good Djent album. Since then though they’ve been languishing somewhat, struggling to create a worthy follow up. The Simulation unfortunately still doesn’t quite meet their potential.

As the first part of a planned split release double LP, The Simulation is quite a short album, with a running time of just 25 minutes. Although there is no shortage of solid riffing on the album, there is very little of the progressive elements that resonate with me in any meaningful way. I really do love me some odd time riffs, but with bands like Periphery showing how much farther this style can be pushed, they just feel a little one note.

The production on this record is a pretty standard, but luckily manages to avoid sounding overproduced like much of it’s ilk. Although some of the synth sounds on this are really terrible. Under The Gun in particular has a recurring motif that almost has a house feel to it, which doesn’t mix well with the djenty guitar tones.

At least there are some good vocal hooks on this album, but as previously mentioned it doesn’t compare to their peers recent efforts, especially in the melody department(see Tesseract’s Sonder for reference).

I realise I’m coming across more negative than I intend with this review. This album isn’t bad, I really enjoyed tracks like Disconnectome which try to push the envelope a bit more than the other tracks on display. Ultimately though, it just doesn’t do much to get me excited about their upcoming 2nd part to this LP, or come anywhere close to their potential.

2.5/5 — Mediocre

Reviewed by Séamas Ó Sandair