No artist credited
Style: darkwave, singer-songwriter (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Oceans of Slumber, Dead Can Dance
Country: Texas, United States
Release date: 21 February, 2025
With each release, Oceans of Slumber continue to be possibly the most frustrating band in all of the prog sphere for me. On paper, their sound should be incredible, and every member of the band has more than enough talent to make masterpieces, Between ever-shifting genre conventions, production that toes the line between mediocre and outright bad, and albums that are far too long for their own good, I just can’t seem to make them stick. They have moments of fleeting brilliance, like ‘Decay of Disregard’ from 2020’s The Banished Heart and the title track of Where Gods Fear To Speak, where I feel an incredible band just waiting to poke through. This all being said, why do I have such a fixation and frustration with them in particular? There are plenty of middling prog bands I could furrow my brow at, so why them?
The reason is Cammie Beverly has a voice that can reduce even the manliest of metal dudes to tears. She is, indisputably—and even with the reputation OoS holds in my book—one of my favorite clean vocalists in the entire scene. She adds a soulfulness that I don’t often find in prog cleans, and her band knows that well. The Banished Heart continues to be my favorite effort due to the sheer number of songs that let Cammie shine, combined with the band’s most varied and creative song selection, even if the album is overly long.
Since I’m trying to expand my horizons a bit (see, I’m not reviewing prog death!), I figured this would be the perfect album to sink my teeth into. At a measly twenty-eight minutes, House of Grief is dwarfed by even the shortest OoS album, and to me, that’s a big plus in its favor. Another positive is every song is chock full of the siren-like croons and soulful musings Cammie Beverly is known for. I can’t knock the vocals on this album, even if I tried my very hardest to find a flaw, but House of Grief suffers from the exact same problem as every Oceans of Slumber album.
Take the album’s title track and opener for example: a very pretty song in its own right, yet completely propped up by a vocal powerhouse to a fault. A melancholic piano and simple drum beat drive the song, save for the strings near the middle, but it all floats around in limbo, and before I know it, most songs are over before I feel they’ve started. ‘For the Sake of Being’ dashes this fault for most of its four-minute runtime, the track arguably the album’s standout, with an electronic drone and string plucking eliciting as much Dead Can Dance as it does a calmer Massive Attack. However, the building crescendo towards the song’s back half builds to nothing, leaving me feeling as though this was a repurposed OoS clean section.
This album has no through line, just like every OoS album. All twenty-eight minutes of this album glide by, with varying standout moments in between, but nothing holds it all together. A collection of incredibly pretty songs, melancholic atmosphere, all riding on Beverly’s vocal talent and that alone. The choral refrains of ‘House of Grief’ and ‘Paraffin’ sound undeniably similar, with the latter adding a bit more dramatic flair; but by the time I’ve reached that point, I’ve already found that the album lacked the variance or creativity that make certain Oceans of Slumber songs click.
‘Another Room’ is yet another standout, mixing up the tempo near the beginning before letting Cammie unleash the bluesy wails that every fan of hers loves. But it falls right back into the same beginning section right after, making the entire song feel half-baked and unfinished, especially given the short runtime. There’s nothing that makes me want to come back to this album, which would be less frustrating if this were someone with a fraction of the talent, but Beverly could command so much more attention. I find the standout moments fleeting between even more moments of sullen plodding, which I shouldn’t be saying about the driving force of an incredibly popular and well-respected prog band.
Like I’ve said this entire review, I can only walk away from this with a sigh of disappointment. I was hoping that Cammie Beverly had a project I could hold up high in the musical archives of my brain. Her voice continues to be one of the best in the scene—and continues to be wasted on albums that have little to no overall vision. A clear display of vocal talent, which is basically her on every Oceans album, isn’t enough to win me over. Without anything else to truly talk about, this record feels mostly empty to me. 28-minutes of music that floats along without much of a highlight anywhere to be found. With the sheer weight of Beverly’s voice, and her many, many years composing music, all I can remain is indifferent to this album.
Recommended tracks: For the Sake of Being, Paraffin, Another Room
You may also like: Marjana Semkina, Ophelia Sullivan, Exploring Birdsong
Final verdict: 5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram
Label: Independent
Cammie Beverly is:
– Cammie Beverly (everything)
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