Review by Brian on April 9, 2015.

Norway has always had these "weird" bands that push our comfort zone as listeners. With the "weirdness" comes the greatness. Back in the mid nineties bands like Ved Buens Ende, Arcturus and Solefald branched out from tradition black metal, using its core elements and experimenting with more progressive, avant garde and challenging compositions. Another of those bands hailing from Norway that likes to challenge it's fan base is Dødheimsgard.

It has been 8 years since DHG released Supervillian Outcast. Finally we get the long awaited follow up, which comes in the form of A Umbra Omega. Is it worth wait? The answer is a resounding YES! Black metal, in particular, has been the form of extreme metal over the past decade or more to continue to push boundries. In Norway this year has already seen the release of Solefald's brilliant World Metal. Kosmopolis Sud and will see Arcturus release their first LP in 10 years. Bridging the gap perfectly between the two are fellow Norwegian avant gard black metal weirdos DHG, who may be the strangest of them all.

A Umbra Omega is a six track album consisting of a short intro and 5 mammoth tracks of creative, original, artfully crafted progressive, avant gard, black metal. All five tracks clock in over 10 minutes and require multiple listens to digest. Each of the five songs uses their length to display various tempo changes and stlyes, from chaotic black metal riffs to progressive noodlings, to acoustic passages, to jazz moments, more black metal and anything else you can think of, yet never feeling forced. The transitions are flawless. This gives the album this strange type of flow even when they chaotically break into certain parts of the songs. The albums dissonant nature gives it this feeling of being detached, but in a good way. The ability to have this overwhelming cold feeling for several minutes then seamlessly transition into some beautiful comforting melody and back to ugliness keeps the listener off balance. This makes each listen different than the last. Because the tracks on this album are so long, I recommend listening in chunks to help with the digestion process.

No matter what score I give this, I am sure that after several more listens it will change. Maybe for the better maybe for the worse. This happens with recordings of this magnitude. I'm still mad about my 9.5 I gave Solefald earlier this year. After repeated listens I realized it's a perfect album and worthy of a perfect 10. I don't believe that A Umbra Omega is a flawless album, but it is a very good album. Regardless of my score, if you are a fan of music that defies the norm then this album is for you. After 8 long years the weirdest black metal band on the planet have released an eclectic album where they incorporate every style of music imaginable and quite possibly invent some new genres along the way.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Review by JD on April 21, 2013.

I saw this simple drawn covered CD come to me, and shades of the very early metal years peeled through my memory all at once, yet I feel this is not the music on this shiny disk. Holodomor is the name of this UK band, taking the term from a genocidal famine that happened in Ukraine provoked by the communist rulers (SRR) in 1932-1933. Let us just see what this act has in store for us.

Playing what can be honestly described as a hybrid of Black, Death and Thrash Metal, it is a surprise to hear. Holodomor play some primitive styled metal, yet it has this incognito element of being well crafted and well played that goes against the simplistic attack that seems to be there. Barbaric Technical power, this band has that in spades.

The UK based thrashers have made an EP lasting barely thirty-three minutes yet they still pounded you with this over the top brutal power that seemed to swirl around from every angle. I loved each song that they had offered up, but the song 'Evoke' had the best trenchant riff ever – even though the song only lasted for two minutes and fifty two seconds. Despite the short explosion - It was a perfect song that just summed up the band’s sound and vision within a few minutes of pummeling.

The sad scoop was that this band was now split up and that sort of news is a sad day for metal. Any band that can combine this purity of technical ability cloaked in this very simplistic approach to their music needs to be out on the road. I hope that they do reform, and keep their sound, this is one band that needs to be in the metallic world.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship: 9.5
Atmosphere: 9.5
Production: 8
Originality: 9.5
Overall: 9

Rating: 9.1 out of 10