Band:	Ophiuchi
Album:	Shibboleth
Style:	Doom metal, Post-metal
Release date:	April 30, 2021
A review by:	Netzach

01. Mercurial
02. Shibboleth
03. Katabasis
04. Decipulum

A psychoactive trek through uncanny harmonies, labyrinthine percussion, and oddball rhythms. This just in: Ophiuchi scores Homeric homerun, returns from Hades with souvenirs worth multiple trips.

Let me bring you back to a simpler time. Remember the few years following your first falling in love with music? A time when you'd be sustained by one song for weeks, by one album for months, and by a few select artists for years? A time marked by a childlike sense of wonder and curiosity, and less marked by oversaturation and hyper-accessibility? A time in a simpler signature than most of Ophiuchi's music? I do. Nearly two decades ago, my dad had borrowed a Nightwish CD from my uncle and was playing it in the car. A few seconds into Oceanborn, the first metal album I ever heard, I was thinking, "wow, music can sound like this?" and the rest is history. A few years down the line, being less impressionable and equipped with a wider frame of reference, such musical eureka moments naturally became less frequent, to the point that I can't recall the last time this happened to me. Well, the binge-listening I've done to Shibboleth suggests it is happening again.

At first listen, as the first chord in a simply stellar guitar tone strikes out against disorienting chants and pounding tribal beats in an attempt to anchor "Mercurial" to the ground only to get swept up into a state of pulverising, psychedelic flux, I was indeed thinking, "wow, music can sound like this?" At second listen, I had nearly figured out the complex polyrhythms accentuating "Shibboleth" and the unpredictable ebb and flow of "Katabasis". At third listen, I was already looking forward to dozens more, and by now I've lost count. Yes, this is highly addictive, and this time around, it feels good to be a junkie.

Like on his debut album, Bifurcaria Bifurcata, Ophiuchi's music dances on a knife's edge between atmospheric bliss and progressive madness, never quite settling fully into either but rather rising above to exist as an ever-changing superposition of the familiar elements it is made of. The admirably dense and crispy rhythm guitar bellows out mid-paced, sludge-infused doom riffs whenever it is not occupied with trying to beat the intricate drum patterns into submission. A thick, gnarly bass tone grounds the other instruments to reality with slightly folksy hooks clearly inspired by Tool. The erratic though expertly precise drum work is the real star of this album. It still somehow defies my attempts at description, but suffice it to say that King Crimson might want to replace their four drummers with whatever insectoid metamorph is smashing the skins on Shibboleth; this is a one-man band, but despite claims otherwise on Ophiuchi's website I somehow doubt he is "anatomically correct". A one-armed band this is not, and the percussion doesn't only decapitate the Minotaur but replaces it to embody the twists and turns in the maze itself.

Unlike the debut album, however, Shibboleth makes use of clean vocals to a much greater extent, bringing an often soothing aspect to a sometimes implosively distended frenzy that at its fiercest moments pummels the senses from directions I can barely point towards as mid-register screams and a tastefully restrained lead guitar pierce through the controlled chaos. This was something I didn't know I was missing on his previous album, but the singing very much takes the music to the next level along with a greater focus on melodic hooks and some of the most dynamic production I've ever had the pleasure to hear; even the thickest distortion sings with organic warmth and I fear to be forever spoiled.

I swear I've heard the textures laid down by the synth pads in the title track before. Not in music, but at the boundary of consciousness. I've been on enough psychedelic adventures to know the sound made by a world, mind, and body undergoing drastic, even unwanted, change. Whether intentional or not, I instantly recognised this not as a sound in transformation, but the sound of transformation, and it touches me on a deeply personal level. Perhaps this is the shibboleth (internal identifier) referenced in the title. Perhaps I'll never know. Yes, transformation is the name of the game. On the debut, it was wrapped in a Kafkaesque recount of the abduction of Persephone by Hades. On this album, it is wrapped in scenarios from Homer's Odyssey, such as references to men shapeshifted into pigs and the descent to Hades and following augury to extract forbidden knowledge from the souls of the dead. Tinged by the apocryphal Gnostic ideas of the demiurge and metaphysics in exile that drove a wedge between Platonism and Christianity, this all combines into a tasty framework for what I relate to as the internal search for buried knowledge in the subconscious mind. In less elaborate terms, a soundtrack to personal development and the agony and ecstasy thereof.

After several dozen listens, I still find little fault in this album. There are some nit-picks, such as "Mercurial" being a rather confusing opener, and the final track "Decipulum" not quite reaching the sublimity of the two central songs and sometimes finds itself skipped over... as I nonetheless replay Shibboleth once more. It must have been years ago since I clearly had a new, long-lasting favourite album like this one, and it makes me want to pester every potential victim (that's you!) into taking it for a spin or two, and help bring about well-deserved greater recognition.

Now, Ophiuchi, bring us back another gem from the Plutonian shores, will you? Charon gives free rides on Sunday mornings, and I'll be waiting.