Oathbreaker’s ‘Ease Me & Four Interpretations’ (Tomtit Music Reviews 7)
A genre-bending set of remixes on personal transformation
This disk might be better suited to my Heavy Metal Goes Tomtits Up subseries, but I’m plowing ahead anyway. Oathbreaker keeps blackgaze company with Deafheaven and ritualistic doom company with fellow Church of Ra collective-mates Amenra. Caro Tanghe has screamed with the latter, but “Ease Me” (2020) is more like the gauzy bits of the former, despite a fair pummeling in the percussion section, so she keeps it clean here. The Jesu Remix bends toward dream pop, the Wife Remix introduces an electronic throb, the Chelsea Wolfe Remix strips it to cavernous drums and electric buzz, and the Michael A. Muller Remix melts into meditative synths and splashes of acoustic guitar. Far from repetitive, the same song times five describes an emotional arc from turmoil to tranquility. Ease Me & Four Interpretations (Deathwish, Inc.) is a welcome EP from a band with too few releases.
Note: I wrote this for Medium.com. If you are reading this on another platform, it has been pirated. I quit the Medium Partner Program, so I’m not doing this for money. It is nice, however, to know someone’s reading, so please clap or comment to let me know somebody’s out there. Gladius adhuc lucet.
