Old Man Gloom's NO is a weird record. It's also a graceful, surprisingly catchy one. It's a complex, knotty collection that speaks to the members' hard-won confidence in each other and what they do together. In some ways it's reminiscent of labelmates Harvey Milk's "late-period" LPs, 2008's Life… The Best Game in Town and 2010's masterclass in minimalism A Small Turn of Human Kindness. Each is an exercise in patience and actual heaviness as well as an example of a group not afraid to blend genres and styles in a way that doesn't feel choppy or random. When a group's personality is strong enough, variations are pulled into an overall aesthetic that makes sense even when it goes way way out. You don't see the stitches.
Though, on average, younger than the guys in Harvey Milk, Old Man Gloom are also made up of dudes starting to find gray in their beards. (Unlike Harvey Milk, they could still use some Ritalin.) You might be tempted to call OMG a "super group," but that's a ridiculous term in 2012, especially in the context of underground music. Instead, think of the band as longtime friends who happen to be members of other groups, because that's what lifers do. Co-founders Aaron Turner (Isis, Mamiffer, Split Cranium) and Santos Montano handle vocals/guitars and drums, respectively. They're joined by Caleb Scofield (Cave In, Zozobra) on bass and Nate Newton (Converge, Doomriders) on guitar. Everyone screams or adds clean or distorted vocals, and there's also no shortage of electronics, pedals, unnamed noisemakers, and other "instruments" (sheet metal, toilets, shoes).
NO is OMG's fifth album, the first in eight years. Fitting for such a long gestation, we're told it's "the cumulative response to a lifetime of saying 'yes,' when just the opposite should have been said instead." NO wasn't guided by an album cycle, and these guys are very busy with their other projects. It's something, one might suppose, that they just wanted to do. In that sense, and others, OMG feel more like a collective than the usual touring band (though tour they do). Their "clarion call for those who are no longer willing to say yes to that which corrodes life, mind, heart, and soul," is individualistic, fucked up, and unrelentingly apocalyptic while remaining life-affirming.
NO opens with two minutes of cavernous, drafty bass thumping and drone as part of a song called "Grand Inversion", a track that melds static, high-pitched white noise, and piped synthesizer into a kind of anti-introduction. The first proper song, the eight-minute "Common Species", feels like a more typical sludge anthem until it degrades into shards of feedback and howling that eventually morphs into clusters of a gentler, sparkling clatter. It's a bit like Christian Fennesz (and then Steve Reich) having his way with Metal Machine Music. The implosion bleeds into "Regain/Rejoin", a track led by Aaron Turner's gruff shouts and a catchy guitar part that that grows increasingly anthemic as the song around it dissolves.
I kept thinking about broken glass when first listening to NO, and the effect is a bit like a house of mirrors. You never get a straight-up song, or one that follows an expected trajectory. But you do get some of the best hooks associated with any of these guys since the last Converge album. There's "To Carry the Flame" with its choir of angry dudes (and zany electro squiggles). The explosive "The Forking Path", fronted by Scofield, locates a whiplash industrial S&M pace before unloading into soothing backward guitars and chimes. Then there's the extremely minimal "Shadowed Hand", eight minutes of low-level drone, feedback, and resonant western-tinged guitar strings that feels like recent Earth stripped to its barest core until the dynamic piano surges and almost-goth explosions at the six-minute mark. At that point, they located another anthem before the boom and hiss (and AmRep sound) of "Rats", "Crescent"'s bizarro haunted acoustic meandering (reminiscent of a twangy Neurosis side project), and "Shuddering Earth", a 14-minute closer that cycles through all of the styles that came before it and then folds in a few other approaches.
I can see people being turned off by NO's duration-- nine songs in just over 56 minutes-- and the more-is-more kitchen-sink approach to composition. But excess and overload are a couple of OMG's assets. This is not simple music, and the band doesn't make it easy for itself or the listener. Considering that experimentation, though, and the overall sound and vibe, it does goes down relatively easy thanks to the smart sequencing and smarter songwriting. This is an experienced group, four guys who've been at it for a long time, and who know when to tip the scales in this or that way to repel you and then pull you back: The "old man" in their moniker is increasingly fitting, and it suits them.
