Long-running Portland, Maine doom trio OGRE has signed with Cruz
Del Sur Music for the October release of their forthcoming fifth studio
album, “Thrice As Strong”. The album was tracked with Rowan Bishop
at Garage Mahal Recording in Westbrook, Maine.
Practitioners of traditional doom with a mix of ’70s rock and proto metal, OGRE
was formed in 1999 by Ed Cunningham (bass/vocals), Ross Markonish
(guitar) and Will Broadbent (drums). To date, the band has released four
studio albums, with 2014’s “The Last Neanderthal” their most recent.
OGRE came to the attention of Cruz Del Sur through classic word of
mouth — a handful of Cruz Del Sur bands put in the good word for OGRE
to label owner Enrico Leccese.
“Once we started working on this album, we posted a few messages on social
media, reaching out to any potential labels that might be interested in working
with us this time around,” says Markonish. “Will started up a
correspondence with Butch Balich from ARGUS who then put us in
touch with Tom Phillips of WHILE HEAVEN WEPT, who works closely with Enrico.
We played with WHILE HEAVEN WEPT years ago at a doom festival in
Rochester, New York and we’ve also shared the stage with other Cruz
artists, including ARGUS and APOSTLE OF SOLITUDE, so we couldn’t
be happier to share a label with all those great bands, not to mention SLOUGH
FEG, another favorite!”
Since the release of “The Last Neanderthal”, OGRE has kept themselves
busy with shows in Portland, while working on the material that would
eventually become “Thrice As Strong”. The band even found time to make
their impact abroad: “One particularly cool thing that we did
recently was travel to Arkhangelsk, Russia in October of last year to
play the Belomor-Boogie Festival, a Russian rock festival that currently
is in its 25th year of existence,” notes Markonish. “Arkhangelsk is the
sister city of our hometown of Portland, Maine, so it was an amazing
experience to travel across the globe and represent the Portland scene for the
people of Russia. We made a ton of new friends and fans out there!”
According to Markonish, the “Thrice As
Strong” album title plays off OGRE’s power-trio formation and is
taken from their namesake song, “Ogre”, which is the first track on
their first album, “Dawn Of The Proto-Man”, which is also where “The
Last Neanderthal” title came from. “As our fans know, we really like all of
these self-referential details, as it sort of builds up the concept
of an ‘OGRE Universe’. Not surprisingly, we are all fans of comic
books, sci-fi and horror novels/movies, and bands like RUSH, who
specialize in those sorts of geeky things.”
OGRE is recording with Bishop because of his “good set of ears”
and the stripped-down feel of Garage Mahal Studios. Markonish
says the new songs are not a departure from the band’s vintage sound, but fans
can expect a few different influences this time around.
“When we first started working on this album, our original plan was to try to
keep song lengths down a bit,” he says. “Reason being, our prior albums all
featured at least one song in the 10-15-minute range, never mind our concept
album, ‘Plague Of The Planet’, which consists of a single, 37-minute
song! While that proved difficult (a couple songs on this album stretch into
the 8-minute range), it still did inform our general approach to songwriting
this time around.
“I would also say that there is a bit more of an ‘80s metal influence on
these tracks — some MAIDEN, a little DIO perhaps, and also some
of the more underground bands of the time, like CIRITH UNGOL and MANILLA
ROAD. Rowan even said he heard a little MERCYFUL FATE on some
of the songs! The way I put it to someone, while our prior albums
were majorly influenced by ’70s-era PENTAGRAM, this one shares some of
its sound and ethos with the Victor Griffin ’80s line-up that
produced the ‘Relentless’ and ‘Day Of Reckoning’ albums.”