Pushing boundaries is nothing new to Omerta. With their latest single, “Charade,” the band blurs the line between music, cacophony, the avant-garde and the outright unhinged.
Let’s talk about it.
A New Era
Described by Culture Addicts as a “five-minute opus,” “Charade” is the first track of Omerta’s upcoming album “Suicycle.” The album is set to come out via Blowed Out Records, the label manned by Ross Robinson, Ghostemane and Bill Armstrong, later this year.
As I explained in my profile on Omerta, the band’s genre is hard to define. Despite the valiant efforts of Redditor music aficionados to uncover this sacred truth, the band’s classification ultimately depends on who you ask.
Are they nu metal? Trap metal? Metalcore? A flagrant affront to the music world in general? The Council has yet to offer an answer, and it seems Omerta is dead-set on only further tormenting musical purists.
Have you ever taken a college course that was considered a “make-or-break” type of class? If you’re a STEM major, you probably have. These classes are arduous and tough and often soul-crushing, designed to weed out the people who just can’t hack it.
In a way, “Charade” is a “make-or-break” kind of song. You either get it or you don’t.
Early Releases
I fell in love with Omerta after catching them live at Hangar 1819 back in 2022, during which they performed tracks from their debut album “Hyperviolence.”
How to explain “Hyperviolence?” It’s vile and razor-edged and gritty, the kind of music you’d listen to as an angst-ridden teenager riding the school bus at 6 a.m.. Vocalist Gustavo Hernandez, despite being 5 feet and 2 inches tall, emanates palpable rage. The instrumentation is fierce, the lyrics capricious and the album’s central theme — violence — taking center stage.
In 2023, Omerta released the single “Antiamorous,” a downright caustic track with heavy experimental flair. You can read about it here.
After “Antiamorous,” the band teased “Suicycle” — referencing the term “sui generis” rather than suicice — calling the album the start of a new era. On May 1, 2024, they dropped “Charade.”
“Charade”
The first thing I asked myself after listening to “Charade” was: do I like this?”
The question was difficult to answer. So naturally, I listened to the song 20 more times. I’m still not sure if I actually like it, but it’s certainly interesting.
“Charade” features vocals from Vicente Void, former member of Darke Complex, and alternative rapper Hash Gordon. Both artists have worked with Omerta before, with Void producing most of the band’s songs and Gordon featuring on the “Hyperviolence” track “Cidephile.”
There’s a hard masculine edge to much of Omerta’s music, with the glorification of violence often taking on Clockwork Orange levels of absurdity. From the first few seconds of “Charade,” I knew I was witnessing something drastically removed from the band’s previously-established “brand.”
I was shocked to learn that Gustavo provided most of the song’s vocals, especially those at the first half of the track. His hard, barbed edges are rendered smooth as breakcore-esque electronic beats crackle in the background. I was instantly reminded of the English covers of Vocaloid songs I used to listen to as a tween, and I thought to myself is this actually Omerta?
Just as soon as I asked myself this question, a distorted guitar entered the chat. The vibe instantly shifted, quickly ushering in what I would consider to be classic Gustavo: loud, throat-ripping and laden with expletives. Next, Hash Gordon sending the track into a full-on adrenaline rush with a rapid-fire slant. I was reminded of the insanity of Spider Gang (specifically, Methhead Freestyle).
At this point, I lost my grasp on the song entirely. Even now, having listened through it over a dozen times, I can’t really make sense of it. There’s simply too much going on for my mind to comprehend, hence my inability to truly state whether or not I actually like it.
Final Thoughts
“‘Charade’ is cringecore,” the band said in a public statement. “It’s avant-garde. It’s post-post-hardcore. It’s acid jazz. It’s K-Pop. It’s prog rock. It’s an anime opening. It’s neo metal. It’s an overture heralding the arrival of a sui generis cycle.
“The postmodern condition has relegated Sincerity, Love and Beauty to vestiges of a bygone era, and in their stead, Cynicism, Irony and Ugliness abound. In this profound, suffocating darkness and loneliness, this song is our proposal for a vibe shift – a bullet through the skull of Nihilism.”
Whether or not “Charade” is truly a “bullet through the skull of Nihilism” or the members of Omerta have simply read too much philosophical theory (or watched too many arthouse films) remains to be seen. With the upcoming release of “Suicycle,” perhaps “Charade” will fit into a bigger, more coherent context.
Or perhaps not. But that may be, as the band suggests, precisely the point.
