Black Orchid Empire – Tempus Veritas (Review)

This is the fourth album from UK progressive metal band Black Orchid Empire.

Tempus Veritas showcases that talents of Black Orchid Empire across an easily enjoyable 38 minutes. The style is a contemporary blend of progressive, technical, and alternative/melodic rock/metal, one that is textured and vibrant.

This is a well-written collection of songs that balances accessible hooks with emotive depth and feeling. The band’s approach is song-focused, and delivers much for the listener to explore and immerse themselves in. This is music that’s quite gorgeous in its execution, with luscious vocals and rich, deep melodies.

There’s a great deal of catchy and memorable material on Tempus Veritas. Black Orchid Empire clearly have a lot of melodic skill, and they use this well across the songs. I was surprised by how intricate the music can be, despite its traditional song structure. The songs are more technical than I was expecting, but never let this get anywhere near obscuring the needs of the song.

Black Orchid Empire have produced a very enjoyable modern progressive metal album that drips with melodically rich emotion and powerful singing. If you’re a fan of contemporary rock or metal, then Tempus Veritas is for you.

Very highly recommended.

For fans of Tool, Monuments, Incubus, Deftones, Cave In, Muse, and Tesseract.