Osees don’t release records so much as dispatches from a long campaign, and Abomination Revealed at Last arrives like a flare: terse, furious, and aimed squarely at the everyday engines of greed and control. It’s the band’s leanest political statement in years, embracing the blitzed minimalism of A Foul Form while threading in the synth static and psych residue they’ve hoarded since the mid-2010s. The title reads less like provocation than diagnosis.
“Abomination” kicks the door in—ninety feral seconds, serrated guitars, a parting smear of circuitry that signals the album’s design principle. Electronics aren’t gloss here; they’re accelerant. Across a dozen cuts, flickers of Devo-like twitch and warped transitions keep the chassis bucking. When the band drop guitars mid-song on “Glass Window,” leaving drums and a barked cadence, the air feels ionized; their return lands with the force of a hinge blasted off.
The spine is punk—short, mean, mobile—but the musculature is rhythmic. Twin drummers Dan Rincon and Paul Quattrone interleave accents so the songs seize and lurch rather than simply sprint. Tim Hellman’s bass gives contour, especially on “Sneaker,” which swells from warehouse throb to clipped anthem. “Coffin Wax” hinges on a sour, wrong-footing chord; “God’s Guts” rides a sped-up floor-tom shuffle under Dwyer’s most guttural barks. Even the flash grenades—“Ashes 1,” “Ashes 2”—prove impact comes from arrangement, not just volume.
“Flight Simulator” supplies the counterweight, blooming from barked verse and chant-along chorus into a bass-and-drum fugue that nods toward Floating Coffin without lapsing into nostalgia. Lyrically, Dwyer isn’t dressing up the punches; he’s aiming for contact. “Infected Chrome” grants the set a cool, retro-futurist sheen, while “Glue” stretches and breathes—noise guitar arcing over a loping low end. Closer “Glitter-Shot” adopts a robotic croon that fits the record’s surveillance-state unease and gives the finale a chilling poise.
If there’s a caveat, it’s that brevity sometimes sells ideas short; a few tracks feel like pristine threats more than full statements. Still, sequencing keeps fatigue at bay, and the band’s mutability has matured into method. Abomination tightens the weave of their catalog, linking hardcore miniatures to lysergic labyrinths and lighting the runway for whatever mutation comes next. It moves fast, hits hard, and says exactly what it means.
