Black Orchid Empire have long been a byword for technique and class. For almost a decade now, they have dealt in the sort of heavy music that doesn’t need to choose between brains and brawn, and “Lore” is no different.
“Skinwalker” makes that clear from the off. Billy Freedom’s drums are chaos, there are all the downtuned grooves you can muster, and yet what Black Orchid Empire do so well is present melody as menace. This is heavy, make no mistake, but it is never one-dimensional. Paul Visser’s voice gives it the hook, the light, the thing to cling to while the rest of the band is busy dragging you somewhere darker.
“Angelfire” carries on in the same vein, but adds even more energy to its soaring chorus. “The nightmare only wakes me up,” they sing, and that is about right. This is heavy in every sense, not merely volume or riffs, but atmosphere too. It weighs on you.
That is never clearer than on “The Labyrinth”, which is dense, thick and dark, with a touch of 90s alt-rock about it, anchored by a bass sound that almost dares you to question it. “They failed when they made us” is about as barren and nihilistic as it gets, but the brilliance of “Lore” is in its peaks, troughs and textures. The song never settles where you expect it to, and that unsettling quality becomes one of the record’s great strengths.
“Lost Horizon” builds to its chorus splendidly, but the way it gets there is every bit as interesting. That is another recurring feature here: you never second guess this album. It refuses the obvious route. “Scissormouth” underlines that with passages of keys that give the thing an ambient, almost cinematic quality, before the title track “Lore” pushes even further into prog territory. If this was vinyl, old money style, you could almost imagine it forming the bridge between the two sides.
Then comes “Tristar”, and good grief, the ambition of it. This belongs somewhere as big as its sound. It is enormous, widescreen, chest-out stuff, and let’s be real here: Muse have sold stadiums on less. That is not to say Black Orchid Empire are copying anyone. Far from it. It is more that they have that rare ability to make complexity sound like it belongs in huge rooms.
“Blood God” is poetry with an apocalyptic edge, offering its sacrifice as the harmonies soar. “Siren Of The Sea” proves again just how technically dazzling these songs are. You imagine them crafted rather than improvised, shaped and sharpened until every part has a purpose. There is nothing flabby here. No wasted motion.
Even the songs that lurk more in the shadows are incredible. “Mirrorman”, with its hook of “I’m just like you”, creeps rather than charges, but it still finds a way to get under the skin. And by the time “Ivory” arrives, there is still no drop-off in quality, no lazy cliché, no sense that the ideas have run out. “If not me, then who?” they ask, and it is a hell of a question. More to the point, who else would have thought of doing it quite like this?
“Second Life” closes things in more mellow fashion, but only just. There is still the feeling that the song is barely restraining itself, pulsing away beneath the surface. The strings soar, the emotion swells, and when they suggest, “tell me what I owe”, it sounds less like a lyric and more like someone desperate to settle a debt with the universe.
The word “lore” means a body of traditional knowledge, stories and beliefs, usually passed down over time. That is hard to do on a website, admittedly, but let me tell you this: “Lore” is sensational.
Watch these Orchids bloom.
RATING 9/10
