Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio - Apocalips

Often, first listening gives the best impression, second one just confirm our judgement. Third one is for pleasure.
Sometimes there is albums that require more than the first impression in order to be appreciated, which ultimately means, understanding them. Those are generally few.
I felt uncomfortable with my first impression on this album. I founded it weak, musically and lyrically poor (comparing with previous releases) and too much pop influence found, made it feel kind of melancholic neoclassical saccharine.
So there it goes, second listening. With all my faith and love for this band I have to say that I just confirmed my first impression as usual.
It is a weak album (weak, not bad). The beautiful and well composed poems we were accustomed to are not longer be, instead there’s kind of a childish simplicity word play with a narrow rhyme style (incredible simple and sometimes just silly). There are still shades from their categorically good and adventurous compositions, but generally appreciated the work lacks the goodness and greatness of their classic lyrics.
ORE musical strategy is neoclassic, yet even some songs are memorable, especially the opening and closing tracks, the overall simplicity of their composition is really a great lose. Some songs seem almost like fillers, and that’s too bad.
Neoclassic style demands greatness and melody, yet the resume from the whole work is repetition, the melody gets interrupted and aborted by the one-on-one sampler follow up made of three to four chords. When they get out of that vicious circle then they acquire the greatness that “Apocalips” pretended in the first instance.
Many bands are now embracing the more pop oriented tunes, the commodity in terms of creation that brings that genre, its catchy and simplistic attempts, the possibility to reach more people yet generally the radical condition to leave the art route . “Apocalips” lands there too. The message of “Apocalips” is about rendition and fatigue expressed on the musical style, strategy and creative effort employed, more than the ideological content it may have behind it’s lines.
In deep this work is about nihilism through hedonism and a clear symptom of decadence and conformism.
The Velvet Underground accommodation on “She is in love with a whip-My venus in furs” is hard to swallow. It sounds kind of a funeral march and a pathetic jerk off at the same time. It’s a pretty hard to re-make song, considering the sublime devious purity of the original one. Militar snares and out of emotion vocalization was not be an ace here.
The artwork is great. A luxurious minimalism perhaps that reflects a more feminine spiritual approach and a clear aesthetic that comes as a pleasurable hit for the owner.
This album saves itself, but not from a high expectation nor patience that comes from repeated listenings (Patience as twin brother of hope will just bring deception), but love. Love for a band with guts and bravery, original in medium full of mediocrity and equality, a hedonistic dandy entertaining us with his artistic offerings to the gods of pleasure and rebellion.
So it’s a good album, maybe too approximate to our times of advanced nihilism, maybe just the reflection that comes from the post coitum exhaustion or just plainly from the global “Apocalips”.