Band: OSI
Album title: Blood
Label: Inside Out
Distributor: SPV - CNR
Release date: 27/04/2009
Release: CD

This is now the 3rd full-length album by OSI (named after the shortlived US government agency Office Of Strategic Influence, established shortly after the 9/11 disaster in New York), following 2003’s Office Of Strategic Influence, 2006’s Free, and that same year’s EP Re-Free (featuring 3 remixes of Free tracks). Both albums, by the way, also came in limited special editions with a bonus CD (OSI’s bonus CD boasting 3 additional tracks, and 3 videos…while Free’s bonus dischad 6 additional audio tracks).

Originally intented to be a solo project of Fates Warning guitarist Jim Matheos, with the help of Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy on drums. He also approached Porcupine Tree’s Steve Wilson for the vocal part of things, but Wilson declined after hearing what was already written at the time. Later he would nevertheless contribute singing to the OSI album’s track “ShutDOWN”! Matheos then contacted Kevin Moore of Chroma Key (who’d already played keyboards on several Fates Warning albums during the ‘90s and early 2000’s, and was in fact the first keyboard player of Dream Theater until 1994), to edit and developed some of the music already recorded. Then Sean Malone was hired to play the bass and Chapman Sticks. For the position of singer Pain Of Salvation’s Daniel  Gildenlöw was considered, but then Moore already had put his somewhat melancholic raspy vocals on top of the songs he’d been developing, and it became evident that the project better continue with him as the singer! Although Portnoy didn’t like the way the music had developed following Moore’s handling of it, and was in fact quite vocal about discontinuing further participation in the project, he DID participate in the recordings of Free (which for dark reasons we were not sent to review, but which I bought afterwards anyway). On the bass (or at least on 5 of the tracks, the other tracks’ bass lines done on programmed synth by Moore) we now found Joey Vera (a Fates Warning bandmate of Matheos).

Drums on the new album are done by Porcupine Tree’s Gavin Harrison, and the only other guest appearance comes from Opeth’s Mikael Äkerfeldt, singing on the track “Stockholm” (of which he also wrote the lyrics)…Matheos handling bass duties all by himself (sharing programming and the playing of keyboards with Moore)! Stylistically, nothing much changed. Some tracks are heavier and driven by sharp electric guitar sounds, while still having a layer of enticing keyboards. On other tracks Matheos either uses very little electric guitar (and then with an emphasis on chorus and much less distortion), acoustic guitar, or no guitar at all…the keyboards taking in a more important place accordingly! Although the approach of heavy versus calmer is quite different and will probably find prefference among the fans either way, each are typically OSI, and personally I LOVE the alternating intensities! Funny thing, I only noticed “Stockholm” had a different singer when I read about it and took special notice! And that with the two singers being so different…just goes to show you how important the music itself is, in the case of OSI! Like with the two previous albums, there will be a special edition with bonus tracks, this time those being “No Celebration” (with vocals by Tim Bowness of No-Man), a cover of the Elliott Smith song “Christian Brothers”, and an extended version of album track “Terminal”, re-dubbed “Terminal (Endless)”.

To hear some samples of the album’s tracks, surf to osiband.com, at myspace.com/osiband you’ll only find full-length versions of track off the first two albums. The fact that the album was leaked out onto the Internet on March 31 may have to do something with that! Anyway, the tracks on MySpace will provide those among you who haven’t made their acquaintance with OSI yet (as I’m sure there will still be plenty of people, even among those “specialized” in Prog Metal) with enough listening material to get an idea of what to expect on the new album! Meanwhile, know that Blood is now splattered all over my year-lists (alternate way to letting you know that I’m nominating Blood into my “Best Prog Rock/Metal Albums Of 2009”-list)!

98/100

Tony.