I’ll be the first to admit that the Gothenburg sound is probably the most overdone and over saturated style in metal, but I’ll also quickly admit that I’m a huge fan, especially when done right. Meet Finland’s Omnium Gatherum if you haven’t done so already. The Redshift marks the bands fourth long player, and fourth time they’ve brought something fresh and unique to a genre overrun with redundancy, despite the opinion of many that their past two efforts (Years in Waste and Stuck Here on Snakes Way) were lacking.

My words cannot properly do The Redshift justice. Rarely have I heard heavy combined with such beauty, sadness and sorrow. When I say heavy, I do not mean in the brutal sense – it’s more of a feeling. Trapped somewhere between Dark Tranquillity and Edge of Sanity (who is criminally underrated I might add), the melodies are nothing short of amazing, with the ability to completely drown you, yet carry you through the album – always smooth, yet cutting. These melodies split and share time with dual guitar and keys, one never truly stealing the show, but rather complementing and working off each other. Take “The Return” for example – it begins with keys, but gives way to a contrasting, chugging riff, only to come back again then succumb to an infectious guitar melody that carries the song – it’s these small details like this that truly make this album a great and addicting listen. On “The Redshifter”, the keys never really come out front, but simply complement the guitars, and in contrast, on album opener “Nail” it’s the keys that drive melody. The variation is plentiful, but never disrupts the flow, or overall somber atmosphere.

While the melody is what truly makes the album, it doesn’t work to over shadow the other elements of the music, as each holds its place and does a fine job. The bottom end is very solid, and made even more so by a bass you can actually hear without difficulty. Vocally, Jukka Pelkonen has improved leaps and bounds from his debut with the band last time around where his performance was pretty one dimensional. Here, his standard and nothing too special growls are again dominant (yet more fitting this time), but there is a great increase in the use of sorrowful sounding clean vocals that come off sounding as a cross between the cleans of Dan Swano, Mikael Stanne, and Peter Steele. “Greeneyes” is completely made up of these vocals, but other instances show up in “A Shadowkey”, “No Breaking Point” where it’s a super catchy chorus, the aforementioned “Nail” and “The Return”, “The Second Flame” and album closer “Distant Light Highway”, where the verses are more or less whispered.

You may have noticed I made two references to Edge of Sanity, and it should be of no surprise really as Mr. Swano himself expertly produced the opus. I must say he did an impeccable job.

One of the things I most enjoy about The Redshift is the flow of it – nearly 50 minutes spread over 11 tracks just breezes by. This to me is always a sign of a great album as I get lost in it, and when it’s over, I immediately want to hear it again.

The bottom line is The Redshift is a remarkable and masterful piece of melodic death metal that not only fans of the genre should enjoy, but any of you who were fans early on that have long since forgotten due to the retarded amount of bands attempting it. It may not click right away, but I found through repeated listens new layers of awesomeness that kept me coming back to discover more. “Amazing” barely even begins to scratch the surface.

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