Fresh off a new split with Botanist (which we premiered last month), California's Oskoreien is back with a whole new full-length album, the project's first since 2011. All Too Human sees Jay Valena push himself even further than usual. He's long been the band's sole member, in addition to having recorded and mixed the album (Jack Shirley at Atomic Garden stepped in to handle mastering) so that triple-duty is nothing new; rather, he's clearly invested a great deal of time and thought into perfecting his gloomy, generously melodic take on black metal—a sound whose harmonies retain traces of the project's folk-inspired roots, whose vocals are sparse and ragged, and whose percussion percolates quietly but purposefully under the rush of riffs and blankets of distortion.Music aside, when he told me that, "It's a concept album about free will inspired by the story of Charles Whitman," I had to know more. As Valena explained, "Charles Whitman was the infamous 'Texas Tower Sniper' whose murderous rampage on August 1, 1966 left 16 dead (including his wife and mother) and 32 injured. It's impossible to point to any one thing tipping Whitman over the edge into violent insanity, but the fact that he had a tumor impacting the brain's center for emotional regulation has been implicated as playing a large role in his personality change. I've always had an interest in neuroscience, especially as it pertains to free will, and Whitman's story was an appropriately extreme vehicle for exploring those concepts on a metal album.'The album is streaming in its entirety below (I'd recommend listening to it in one go, since, y'know, concept albums tend to flow best that way) and will be available on December 2, with preorders live now.
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Kim Kelly is atomic gardening on Twitter.