Album Premiere: Ohpen Ahrms’ Lying Beside You is Journey By Way of My Bloody Valentine
Mixing heavy progressive rock and shoegaze elements, four of Chicago’s sons have come together to put out a slate of grenre-bending tunes as Ohpen Ahrms. With their debut album Lying Beside You set to release tomorrow, MetalSucks has the whole thing available for streaming before anyone else.
If you read the band name Ohpen Ahrms and the album’s title, you may be thinking “hey, wait a minute — is that a Journey reference?” And you’d be right. These guys are apparently fans of Journey’s 1981 classic album Escape and both the band name and the album title are direct nods to the saccharine, yet insanely popular love song “Open Arms.”
And while you can certainly hear the progressive rock and some metal in their music, there’s definitely an air of shoegaze to add a extra something, something to the mix.
Like most new music that’s been coming out in recent years, the album was recorded from 2021 to 2023 in the wake of the pandemic and the isolation it wrought. Alan Strathmann (guitar/vocals/synths) said that period of collective trauma served as an inspiration for the record.
“The isolation of the pandemic made me pretty introspective. And the moments of inspiration were also pretty messed up, and fearful. I imagine songs on Lying Beside You as a kind of fantastical autofiction, focusing on very specific ideas like the societal conception of evil or the language of war and of suicide pacts… but also as a processing on the way back to things from my past. Not just to pre pandemic times – being in a band writing music – but also to what feels like a much more distant and liberated place.
“I think that’s why I was thinking about Escape, and the impact of bands and albums that changed me early on. Among those inspirations the lyric ‘Lying beside you’ stood out to me – of course the play on words – as a way of putting our voices alongside all others, even as unreliable narrators – but also big sounding, layered rock worked as a way of helping me put all of these things in a box.”
What stands out in the music below is how big it all sounds. Each member, Strathmann (guitar/vocals/synths), Quinn Curren (drums/percussion), Sam Ross (guitar/vocals), Sheldon Kessel (keys/organ), and Andy Wulf (bass) come together to add to the sonic ghoulash that’s sweet and heavy at parts without ever getting so bitter to give Jeppson’s Malört a run for its money.
So definitely check out the album below and hit play. You can preorder Lying Beside You today or get your copy tomorrow wherever you get your music.
