This review was commissioned. However, it bears no weight on the score or decision. All reviews are written from an unbiased standpoint.
You know what’s pretty call? Finding out which musicians are from where, and then finding out said musician began their career not too far from where you’re located. The musician I’m talking of, as the title of the article suggests, is Omar Doom who was born in Easton, PA which is about twenty minutes or less from myself. Not really pertinent to the score or review in any sense of the manner, it’s more or less a fun fact. Another fun fact about Omar Doom is his relationship with infamous director Quentin Tarantino, who encouraged Doom to get into acting and then cast him in films such as Death Proof, Inglorious Basterds, and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
While his acting credentials are not to be undermined, I also think it’s time to recognize Omar Doom for his music career rather than his acting one. After all, many of the press releases received speak of his original love for music that echoes back to his high school years fronting a band called Ordeal, and even collaborated with Stretch Armstrong in the now defunct two-piece project Doomington. Come to the 2020s and Omar Doom has returned to his first love and now makes music under Straight Razor.
And Straight Razor has been relatively successful as an independent project, racking up a few hundred-thousand streams per song on Spotify and gaining that coveted Verified Artist badge. Alongside that, he has a decent cult-following who check out and purchase all his music. Which brings us to the now where he released his latest album “Casualty”.
Diving right on in then and holding nothing back, there’s no shock when I say that Doom’s vocals on this album aren’t all too impressive. This isn’t something I wanted to type about throughout the review otherwise it would be mentioned on each and every single song. In a sense, Doom’s voice sounds as if it’s strained, or as if someone has their hand around his throat and he’s attempting to speak. I can tell he’s trying to go for a dark theme that pairs well with the darkwave / synth music that’s coming out of this project but it doesn’t sound all that great.
On the instrumental end of things, however, Doom does extremely well. Based on all the song titles and the general theme of each song, complete with dark synths, the dong of a church bell, and so many other little synths that remind me of old horror soundtracks, this sounds like the soundtrack to a long lost horror movie. The opening / title track ‘Casualty’ is a slow crawl through bass-y synths that are punchy while the very next track is an ode to retro darksynth dancefloor hits.
‘Black Smoke Rising’ has those dirty synths that Perturbator has perfected oh-so well, fuzzy and dead on arrival but blistering. The middle of the song gets intercut with brighter synths that wouldn’t sound out of place as the soundtrack to a full moon. The only thing missing was a werewolf howl. ‘Misery’ goes back to dancefloor material, but it’s extremely smooth while ‘Black Elixir’ utilize raw drum pads to give it an organic feel. By the time we hit the final three songs – those being ‘Suffering’, ‘Cold Moon’, and ‘The End’ – I feel as if we heard most of what’s in Doom’s repertoire and it gets a bit repetitive. The songs are mixed and mastered well but I can’t help but state that things get a little stale at this point.
Omar Doom’s “Casualty” isn’t a bad album by any means necessary; there are quite a few shining moments in it and he clearly knows what he wanted to make on the album. A throwback to so many great horror soundtracks. Retro and nature and modern in another. Production is grand throughout, but as stated above, it does begin to sound same-y towards the end. And I will repeat myself when I say that Doom’s voice desperately needs to be improved. I can’t really say what can be done here to improve it as I’m no vocal coach. But perhaps reaching out to other artists in the scene for guest vocals wouldn’t be too bad of an idea. The music is there, the vocals aren’t.
