This is the third album from US progressive extreme metal band Orgone.
Pleroma is a 65-minute multifaceted beast of a record that, loosely, can be described as progressive/technical death metal. Orgone flesh out their death metal base with technical expertise and progressive depth. Around this though they breach a range of other musical territories, including folk, jazz, classical, and progressive rock.
It’s a heady and involved mix. For rough reference points, think of a fascinating melting pot of bands such as Between the Buried and Me, Corpo-Mente, Distances, Ephel Duath, Ne Obliviscaris, Obscura, Opeth, The Otolith, Peccatum, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and Subterranean Masquerade.
Pleroma is a rich, expressive, and evocative album. It’s layered with all manner of musical ideas and creative touches, making for a record that covers a huge amount of ground. The strings are a standout part of the music, and these both contrast and support the more chaotic extremity of the heavier, aggressive side of the material.
Orgone’s songwriting is intricate and complex, but the songs are more emotive and impactful than this description might imply. The technicality is sharp and serrated, with the band’s core hostility coming across as a mix of tech death and mathcore. Around this is arranged great beauty, with progressive and classical string/piano-led structures that provide a twisting anchor to the extreme metal’s rampant ferocity.
Pleroma works best when consumed as a whole. This is a work of art that demands your attention, and spends its hour-plus running time spellbinding the listener so thoroughly that you can forget the outside world exists.
Honestly, I’ve barely scratched the surface of Pleroma with the above description. There is so much to explore and engage with. I can’t help but wonder where it might have placed on this year’s best of list had I discovered it when it was released back in June. Alas, it was not to be. Regardless, Orgone have produced a superior and individual take on extreme metal, one that’s not soon forgotten.
Wonderbox Metal 
Great review! This release saved my year to the point that I have to say, that’s the best music I heard in 2 decades! Really! It sounds so ‘live’, it actually is actually world-traversing Orgone energy made up of conflicting and interacting life forces which are represented in those old-fashioned things called ‘genres’. The dm way of expression is the disenchanted, anguished, enlightened but cynical way of seeing but the multiple other genres that collide and fuse add colour, drive, élan vital, joy of living and playing -all these good things that might get lost in the boring monochrome dystopia we might end up with.
It is so furiously unpredictable and non-repetitive, so well-produced , so dramatically and cinematically composed and so smart. It actually makes the listener feel and so sophisticated (!). The world-leading spazzy guitar contortionist’s communicative emotes and illustrates everything from the most desperate to the most disparate states of mind. The song-writing is so teasing, tight and ‘in the know’ and with abstract but catchy musicality, meandering intensifications and solution and itstechnical mastery it captures and sounds out every possible nook of human experience. The slower and clean-singing bits are neither fillers nor do they just act as palate cleansers. The stormy ‘movements’ and dm ‘suites’ which register civilisations’ decline and inauthenticity are shot through with classically tinged epiphanic moments of calm composure and being one’s true self – this is actually love and empathy propaganda! What an album!