OGEZOR keeps up the pace, telling its story at the rate of an album every two or three years. For the third time, the industrial metal band takes us into its futuristic universe with The Green Light, a universe that is being developed in music videos and short films, as well as in an e-book and video game (for more info, please visit their website).
There's a lot to like about OGEZOR. The first thing that jumps out at you are the aggressive riffs, catchy rhythms and energy. OGEZOR leaves plenty of room for electronics and assumes its dark electro and cyber influences, all embodied by deep vocals with theatrical vociferations. Above all, like many French bands in the genre, OGEZOR cultivates a personal sound, admittedly under many influences, but with a more assertive personality than most interchangeable Teutonic standards: offensive, varied and never boring or predictable.
However, while we're delighted to turn up the volume on the unifying choruses of The Bunker Zero, The Syndicate of Barons or the martial The Holy Dragon, the band's uniqueness lies above all in the ambiences deployed. Occasionally leaning towards synthwave and film music, OGEZOR is not afraid to slow down the pace to impose a more contemplative and melancholy mood, but also one more conducive to giving the music a narrative scope, as on The White Butterflies and its anachronistic solo in a futuristic universe, which gives the track all its intensity. Cyberpunk atmosphere? There's no doubt about it when you listen to tracks like Radium-V and its crescendo frenzy or Dark N's Ego, OGEZOR has not only grasped the trick of bringing a sticky, dystopian world to life and, in its many tributes to geek culture, probably heard the wonderful soundtrack to the video games Cyberpunk 2077 or Deus Ex a few times.
The Green Light is a cinematic experience, and this is its greatest strength: the compositions demonstrate a real depth that makes this universe tangible and gives it an epic breath of fresh air, making the journey through it so immersive that we easily forget its slight flaws (we would have liked, for example, a vocal that was sometimes less monolithic, more expressive in its emotions). By staging the death of the character embodied by singer and project mastermind, F-2301, during a piano conclusion whose sobriety and sudden minimalism make its tragic grandiloquence all the more palpable, OGEZOR leaves some doubt as to its future. For our part, we hope to continue exploring this universe - after all, as the poster for the nightmare that was Scary Movie 4 so aptly put it, we hope for "The fourth and final chapter of the trilogy" !
