LP REVIEW
Regular readers of the Monolith Cocktail will by now be used to the literary adroit moody reviews of our novelist, Ayfer Simms. Adding a certain gravitas to the musical landscape, Simms digs deep and resurrects daemonic metaphors galore, conjuring up something dark for the debut LP by Brooklyn duo Opal Onyx.
Opal Onyx ‘Delta Sands’ (Tin Angel Records) Released 25th August 2014.
Truly, madly deeply, Opal Onyx and the encounter with the devil.
Nobody knows that hell is beautiful and the devil, a prisoner locked up in a den of quarks, is about to rise above our unpoised world. His heart beats while we wait, his heart beats while a somber ominous cloud spreads at the foot of humankind. Opal Onyx has unearthed the path to the wretched empire of the devil and fallen to its knees in adoration.
The devil is slender and paces his own cell up and down, waiting his acquittal with a steel eagerness, calm and yet burning like a bull before his death in the arena, the sound of his breath is filling our air with an invisible thunder. The devil is a man, yet up close his uncanny nature betrays him. From the depth of his cell, his grievous voice escapes and while his tails rattles, he summons all enslaved consciences to be aware of his existence. The devil is not vile, he is the stillness of a cold blade. There is no empathy in his mind, there’s a subdued anger. He is looming while the wind swipes our world. Opal Onyx’s vocalist Sarah, with her siren sublime voice stumbles upon him at the darkest hours of her consciousness, like Lankester Merrin unearthing Pazuzu’s amulet under a scorching sun, she knows the time has come to face the demon, and to love him. She is the one sitting at his feet, she is the one falling for him. Opal Onyx has brought this world to us and we in turn fall for these strange sounds and bewitching voice hardly able to forgo the abominable consequences of such a betrothal.
We wonder dazed, was hell so beautiful? Was the faint scent of the Indian sitar married to the cello the instruments of the dark pit? The embodiment of the nirvana?
The album is the sound of the shipwreck long after everyone has died in the deepest of waters, it’s the sound of the womb pumping the blood of life, it’s the sound of the planets silently creaking in the dark, it’s the sound of the devil himself disguised as a cellist who returns from the dead to heal the inconsolable grief of his beloved wife crying for his sake.
Opal Onyx, the atmosphere, the voice, the cello and other mysterious instruments and techniques used, and the esoteric theme running through the entire album calls for a standing ovation. Let the curtain fall, let them bow, humble and proud.
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