Review: Omnivide – Arise

Artwork by: Marcel Leblanc

Style: Technical Death Metal, Progressive Metal (Mixed Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: An Abstract Illusion, The Faceless, The Contortionist (pre-Language), Obscura, Beyond Creation
Country: Canada
Release date: 10 October 2025

In my tenure here on this spinning rock we call Earth, I’ve courted a somewhat love / hate relationship with technical death metal. At its highest points, the sub-genre has delivered grand slams like Relentless Mutation (Archspire) or Autotheist (The Faceless).¹ However, tech death as a whole tends to get lost in the weeds of its own, well, technicality. Despite the extreme musical virtuosity required to even play in this sub-genre, there’s an awful lot of homogeneity—plenty of bands playing all the twisty notes, but with nothing much to say and no real voice of their own to not say it with. Granted, this is hardly unique to tech death, or even metal itself. Every genre is littered with acts who, while perhaps inherently talented, struggle to find any meaningful place within their musical cabal, unable to do more than simply rehash the hits of other, greater bands. Doomed to forever lurk in the shadows of titans.

That hardly stops musicians from trying to step out from said shadows, however, something for which I’ll always be grateful for. The newest challengers are Canada’s own Omnivide, who, if Metal-Archives is to be believed, was formed by members of Opeth tribute project, Sunbird. With the lines between progressive death metal and technical death metal often blurring to the point of risking going cross-eyed, I could certainly see the likelihood of a successful transition. A few spins of Omnivide’s EP Arise, and I can hear it, too. While these Canucks take much from the ol’ tech death playbook—gnarled, twisting guitarwork, rampant drums, theatrical backing synths, and non-Euclidian song structures—whorls of Opeth’s chthonic imprint can be found, if ever-so-faintly, within passages of introspective keys and quiet guitarwork. But again, imitation, while occasionally impressive, does not always warrant merit. Does Arise carve out a footpath for Omnivide to step into the light? Or are they cursed to languish amidst the churning masses of the tech death dregs?

I’ll admit, on first pass I was ready to write Omnivide off as another The Zenith Passage or Hour of Penance; that is to say a serviceable, obviously talented band that while enjoyable wasn’t particularly moving my needle in any measurable way. However, after multiple trips around the sun, Arise began to unfurl itself before me, like alien flora before nourishing rays of cosmic radiance. The main draw for me became vocalist Samuel Frenette, whose admittedly genre-standard growls were outshined by his frequent shifts into clean and semi-clean vocals. Take the brief cleans on “Void,” or “Tyrannical Saviour,” which serve as harmonious anchor points for the listener amidst the churn of violent riffage and rollicking drumwork, carving out a nook of grounding and respite from the aural madness. “Tyrannical Saviour” is especially tasty, Frenette infusing his delivery with a tough-guy grit that nonetheless lets his range shine through.

This isn’t to say the instrumentation is on a lower plain; far from it. Nicolas Pierre Boudreau and Frenette unleash a salvo of twisting riffs and arpeggiated insanity across the whole of Arise, nimble fingers allowing them to hop, skip, and jump their way across Arise’s multitudinous soundscape. Drummer Marc-André Richard sets the stages well, wielding the sort of inhuman dexterity required when playing tech death. Even keyboardist Samuel Lavoie gets some time to shine, as in the synth-y solo that closes out the end of “Omnipotent,” or the swirling, epic Lorna Shore-esque orchestration on “Arise.” The musicianship overall is expectantly good, with some winsome passages sprinkled throughout the album. “Arise” may be the ultimate winner for me, as it confidently displays the band’s talents, giving everyone a moment to shine as it wends and shifts through a heady eight-plus minute runtime replete with epic synth swells, sinuous guitars, and roiling drums.

However, Arise is not without some minor missteps, chief among them the apparently genre-required (read, most of heavy metal as a whole) intro track. Normally, I would supply a measure of leniency, but this is an EP; real estate is already at a premium. Wasting one of your five tracks on an instrumental that does little to establish the reality of the music beyond “this is epic” is, to put it mildly, disappointing. The saving grace here is that every other song on Arise is over five minutes long, so you’re certainly getting plenty of bang for your buck. Still, doing away with the intro and just jumping into the fray, I think, would be a far better use of time. Another casualty of “modern metal decision-making” is that the bass is nearly indecipherable in the mix. Occasionally, Alex Cormier rises above the din to make his noodle-y Beyond Creation-adjacent bass tone heard, but for most of Arise’s twenty-six minutes, he’s lost in production purgatory, left scraping at the dense walls of guitars and drums in a desperate bid to be noticed. None of this is supremely damning, of course, especially considering the resultant experience is a properly energetic and engaging one, but it warrants pointing out, regardless.

Omnivide are a talented bunch, of that there is no question. Having abandoned Opethian fields for tech death’s labyrinthian architecture, this fearsome fivesome fit into their (relatively) new digs with general aplomb. While there’s nothing particularly gob-smacking happening on Arise that fans of tech death haven’t already heard, Omnivide have nonetheless served up a formidable—and catchy—platter of metal morsels that has left this reviewer, at least, curious to see what they unleash next. After all, all sorts of interesting life has been known to flourish in the shadows.

Recommended tracks: Arise, Tyrannical Saviour, Omnipotent
You may also like: Exocrine, First Fragment, Inferi, Spawn of Possession, Arkaik
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Seek & Strike

Omnivide is:
– Marc-André Richard (drums)
– Nicolas Pierre Boudreau (guitars)
– Samuel Frenette (guitars, vocals)
– Samuel Lavoie (keyboards)
– Alex Cormier (bass)

1.  I know, I know. Planetary Duality is the correct answer. But I like Autotheist more. ↩︎