Stylianos Ou - Rififi Ston Epitafio (An Oral History of Extinction)

Released: October 6 

Always one for eclectic sounds and an uncanny compositional style, Stylianos Ou brings forth an new album full of noisy (although seemingly much more playful and light than previous releases) and sardonically titled tracks that range from playful to mind-bendingly weird in their variances. "Dead is doing rififi in Agios Nikolaos' Pagari" starts out so seemingly soothing with vocoded vocals singing softly on a backdrop of light pads, only to suddenly devolve into wretched and gutteral howls that lead into erratic synth blips and sparse randomized percussion with those same vocoded vocals joining back in again later on. This is not how the album opens, but it stood out to me as a rather poignant example of the pure weirdness of this album. 

The album opens up with the randomized arpeggios of "Varg Vikernes is a homeless man in Kifsia train," which sets a bit of the expectations of what is to come. This naming convention continues throughout, giving tongue in cheek references to some of the most notorious names in the early black metal scene. "Euronymous is a sex worker in Syggrou" continues the weird vocalization style of the track before it, though this time around the vocoded vocals take on a much less smooth tone and instead lean heavily in the direction of completely lurid. I would have to say that this album is a bit difficult. It repeatedly tries to throw you off and into the weeds, but if you can hold on the whole way, it's quite a fun and bewildering experience.