We played Oginalii’s “Light as a Feather” back on Volume 138 of the WOTT Music podcast in anticipation of the accompanying full-length, Cause & Affection. On the show we remarked that it was difficult to come across rock music, particularly of the hard rock variety, that we still found appealing. That particular track felt like an exception to the generally dumb rules of the genre and now that the album is out they’ve materialized our assumptions into a fully formed fact.
Filing bands into buckets of genres can be a dangerous game to play. Oginalii’s album is filled with big guitars that unleash into waves of ominous chords and vocals that turn into a biting snarl, familiar tenants of the Hard Rock sound. However, it’s also got plenty of psychedelic reverb, some dance-y bass lines and the occasional moment of vulnerability. Defining the album into a single column would do it a huge disservice as there are a lot of diverse ideas playing extremely well together throughout the record. “Hard Rock” is generally a male dominated undertaking filled with masculine aggression but Oginalii takes a more subversive and foreboding approach, albeit still a force of nature.
On the whole, Cause & Affection serves as a refreshing reminder that Hard Rock music doesn’t have to a singularly blunt object. This is Exhibit A that there’s plenty of room for finesse and a good fist clenching outburst.