OCEAN GROVE-ODDWORLD

Following the band’s two most recent full-lengths in the genre-bending 2020 alliterative masterpiece Flip Phone Fantasy and 2022’s sun-drenched alt-rock Up in the Air Forever, Australia’s Ocean Grove return with ODDWORLD, a record that in many ways feels like the previous two albums did not happen and picks up where 2017’s nü metalcore The Rhapsody Tapes left off (although not entirely so, as we’ll discuss). Indeed, the interlude "NO OFFENCE DETECTED" actually feels like it could’ve come right off The Rhapsody Tapes. Nü metal is the name of the game here, and if you like bounce riffs, you’ll be in heaven. Track titles like "SOWHAT1999" are probably a dead giveaway that ODDWORLD features plenty of Limp Bizkit-style nü-metalling, whether on that track or others like the previously-released "FLY AWAY."

The album kicks off with the sub-one-minute intro "OG FOREVER," which tees-up the nü metal onslaught of the Korn- and especially Limp Bizkit-influenced "CELL DIVISION," counterbalanced with a strong clean chorus. "MY DISASTER," later in the album, follows a similar template. "OTP," featuring Adult Art Club and New Babylon, closes ODDWORLD out with some aggro rap that would be at home on the Family Values Tour.

"RAINDROP" feels like an amalgam of the predominant sound of Up in the Air Forever with the Flip Phone Fantasy songs like "SUNNY." "LAST DANCE" is a beautiful ballad that hits "all the feels," at one point introducing some "HMU"-esque 80s-style guitar. Along with "STUNNER," a track that I can only describe as nü metalcore on holiday on the Costa del Sol, "LAST DANCE" is probably my favorite song on the album. ODDWORLD is on the whole a highly-enjoyable album from one of my favorite bands in the Australian metalcore (if you can call them metalcore) scene that’s got some major high points, although if there’s a criticism here I do wish the record had a few more tracks to round out the proceedings and give it more overall coherence.