ONI - The Silver Line (2023)

Delivering a guest-appearances filled full-length release, today we have Canadian ONI and their return “The Silver Line”. As a brainchild of Jake Oni, the music created is an interesting mixture of Progressive/Djent Metal with some Metalcore elements. Featuring nine tracks and 30 minutes of music, this release has quite enjoyable and epic songs that are quite dynamic and engaging.

Opening with “Silhouette”, we get a nice contrast between powerful distorted guitars, clean soaring vocal harmonies, and crafty atmospheric synths. The songs are well written and all have catchy hooks, what makes the release even more enjoyable is the assortment of guests used like Sueco on “Spark”, “Underneath my Skin” featuring Kellin Quinn, and “Aura” with Jost Gilbert and Howard Jones. They all bring a different edge to each track, keeping things fresh.

With all songs hovering around 3 minutes a piece, this makes them pack a mean punch, but also makes them feel short without much room to grow and shapeshift. Particularly “Silence in a Room of Lies” and “Cyanide” are two tracks that could have been longer and create a more lasting effect. However, this is not a bad thing, as they keep the excitement going and the listener engaged with the constant changes. We just prefer longer songs.

Closing with “Burns my Soul”, the band nicely rounds up a high-octane release that finishes too hastily. We would have enjoyed a few more tracks, but we can always just have this release on repeat. Overall, ONI keeps things interesting and the assortment of guests add extra dimensions to already entertaining music, so if you are a fan of the genre’s and the band’s prior work, you'll definitely enjoy this one.

Label: Ironshore Records

Release: October 13th, 2023

Genre: Progressive/Djent Metal

Country: Germany