Album Review

OBN – We Are Serious

• 13th Mar 2009

Ocean Bottom Nightmare are glorious. Their new E.P. ‘We Are Serious’ sounds like what would happen if The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster went drinking with Biffy Clyro whilst wearing Bad Religion’s skin.

Kicking off with the full-bore rock n roll monster of ‘Defiling The Apep With The Left Foot’ through to the sludgy, bass led ‘Navigator’ and ending with the ferocious ‘Itchy. Tasty’, OBN have delivered a divinely brilliant E.P. Best song by a country mile has to be ‘The Blade was Rusted Like Aquatic Machines’. A riff as colossal as anything Mastodon could orchestrate underpins a vocal knuckle sandwich that mixes manic shouting with unexpectedly stunning harmonies. You will want that riff to roll on and on and on…

It’s refreshing to listen to a young band coming up with music as frantic and psychotic as this without becoming completely impenetrable. They have a great grasp of how to make songs wild and exciting yet listenable and instantly recognisable. OBN are required listening, just don’t turn the bass all the way up. Bad things will happen.