Hailing from Queensland, Australia, Ocean of Zero have decided to release their two demos onto in one package. Comprised of both The Wake and Shun the Light, Ocean of Zero seems to be taking their time in creating an official full-length release. For what it’s worth, it’s always much better for a band to release a quality album rather than simply shuffling out a collection of rushed tracks.

With that said, Where Sickness Prevails is an entertaining slab of older school death metal. Sporting a rough, organic production thanks to it being a demo, the seven songs are fine examples of how versed the band is in the more vintage take on (mostly) American death metal. The influences are all over the place: Incantation, Suffocation, Autopsy, Sinister, Massacre, Disincarnate, etc. Virtually every single note on Where Sickness Prevails can be traced back to another band in another time. Thankfully that doesn’t take away from what Ocean of Zero has created since their formation in ’09; their take on a tried-and-true genre of metal is worthy of praise no matter how unoriginal it may be.

Each song stays comfortably around the three-minute mark and the trio switch between speedy passages and slower, crunchier ones with ease. Betwixt the fury are eerie atmospherics that reek of the more demented horror films, which adds another layer on top of the already confident death metal the band demonstrates. Anybody who has played the video game Limbo will understand the reference to the haunting, ominous atmospherics found scattered about on this album.

Ocean of Zero is a band with a vision of disorder and they want to encapsulate that within their tunes. They’ve done a remarkable job up to this point and there’s an obvious plethora of talent amongst the three members. For having just two demos out without a proper full-length yet under their belts, there’s no telling where Ocean of Zero will go. Though their take on classic death metal is not even remotely close to reinventing the wheel, they do a terrific job of pulling off a genre of music older than the band’s members. Their official full-length debut will hopefully expand on their instrumentation and whenever it arrives, it’ll be worth the wait.

[Visit the band's website]

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