Cav's Place

No, the two aren’t connected, but I didn’t have enough to say to write separate posts for each. Or, more exactly, all I can say about Antichrisis at the moment fits in a couple of paragraphs while, on the other hand, writing a separate post for Omnia out of the blue would feel rather weird since they’re hardly a new find but I had little reason to pay attention before, which explains why I only now noticed their last two albums, the first of which having been released back in 2010.

To start with Antichrisis, I’m happy to announce that, although the band itself essentially disbanded over three years ago, Sid and Ayuma, with a small amount of help from a few former band members, have recently released the first Antichrisis album that actually contains new material in over a decade. It’s called Not Fade Away and it’s available for purchase through Bandcamp, which obviously also means that you can legally listen to all of it on that site if you are so inclined. Then again, almost all the songs had already been available on the band’s site, though they had stopped also being available for download some months ago.
As far as the music itself goes, this album sticks to their regular rule of being noticeably different from those before it while at the same time having a sound that I’m not particularly keen on. But that’s entirely a matter of taste and you may enjoy it far more than I do, just like you may also relate to the lyrics far more than I do, because most reflect the recent events in Sid’s life and his current outlook, which may have seemed to match mine incredibly well in many aspects back when the other albums were recorded but has apparently moved away from it since. As such, at this point the recommendation may largely be for old times’ sake, but I’ll still make it, especially since I did find myself enjoying Restless Years, which is a track that hadn’t previously been available on their site, a fair bit from the beginning. Who knows, the rest may grow on me in time as well…

Moving on to Omnia, I have to start by saying that I first heard of them when somebody who had been pointed to them by someone else pointed me to them, most likely around the start of 2009. At the time, I certainly recognized the value of what they were doing, certainly realized what they were all about, but other than a couple of poems recited on music, namely The Raven and Fairy Tale, nothing really caught my eye (or ear). In fact, there were only a few other songs that I could see myself listening to more than once or twice, the issues I had with the rest ranging from the one I always have with songs with lyrics in languages that I don’t know to the fact that certain sounds simply rubbed me the wrong way, many sounded too happy, there were too many instrumentals and so on. As a result, I rather quickly put them largely out of mind, though I did find myself looking for those two poems on YouTube a few more times since.
However, I just stumbled into I Don’t Speak Human completely randomly Sunday night, around 1 AM, and it, or more exactly the lyrics and the resulting message, perhaps aided by a certain picture added at exactly the right moment in that little slideshow, made me burst into tears. Now I’m not keen on the instrumental line heard on the chorus and bridge, but the text had me glued to it from the start and at the “fuck you” I found myself giving a round of applause while sitting here in front of the screen and then had to take my glasses off and collapse… And seeing as it’s next to impossible for me to cry while alone, that was quite something, especially since it happened completely out of the blue like that.
The immediate reaction, once I recovered, was obviously to start looking for what they released since 2009, which led me to quickly discover Wolf Love and Musick and Poëtree, being very pleasantly surprised by a good part of what I heard once I listened to them. Of course, their old fans tend to be up in arms because of this new direction the band has taken, and I can certainly understand them since I often find myself in their shoes when something I like changes drastically, but this time we’re talking about a change that steered the band in a direction that I very much approve of. I mean, just listen to Wolf Song, Cornwall and Sing for Love, which are the last three songs on Wolf Love and stunning pieces, every single one of them. And when you also add their claim that the entire Poëtree part of the latest album, made up of traditional songs and covers, has been recorded in a single take, it’s really quite mind-blowing!