Opus Däi, Actum Procul EP

Opus Däi, Actum Procul EP

Before I start this review I just want to get some things out of the way. I chose this album because I was sure it was going to be awful. First of all, there was an unnecessary umlaut in the name. This fact alone would have been enough to make fun of, but the umlaut was over a non-existent Latinesque word. “Dai” is not a Latin word; “Opus Dei” is a very common Latin phrase meaning “work of God.” I get the feeling that “Opus Dei” was already taken, so one of the guys in the band turned to the other and said, “Just turn the ‘e’ into an ‘a’, dude. And put some dots over it for street cred!” Latin does not use umlauts. Trust me, I know — I took two years of Latin in high school. Not once did I put two dots over any word, not even when I translated Iron Maiden’s “Somewhere In Time” into Latin for a project (and if anything deserves to have umlauts, it’s an Iron Maiden song). That being said, I grudgingly enjoyed this album; I even got a couple of the songs stuck in my head. But then again, last week I had the theme from Disney’s GummiBears cartoon stuck in my head. (Here it is if you want to hear it: http://jen.fluxcapacitor.net/cse/gummi/GummiBears.wav. No need to thank me.)

All the songs on this 5-track EP had a similar progressive hard rock flavor to them — think Mars Volta or Tool Lite –except for the last track. Musically, they were very enjoyable and had some nice hooks. The lead singer, however, must stop Cookie Monstering when bits of the song fall out of his range. This tendency may have more to do with the fact that this is a live EP than with the normal sound of Opus Däi’s songs, though, since a quick sample of the songs off of their full-length studio album doesn’t have him doing the Cookie Monster growl.

The fifth song off the album is probably my favorite, a neat little acoustic number called “Best Regards” in which the lead singer actually sings through the entire song and does quite well at that. All in all, the album is good enough to make the “my iPod only has 500 MB left on it, should I leave this off?” cut, but may be inferior to their studio sound.

(Double Blind Music -- 393 Broadway, 3rd Floor, New York, NY. 10013; http://www.doubleblindmusic.com/; Opus Däi -- http://www.opusdai.com/)
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Review by . Review posted Tuesday, June 6th, 2006. Filed under Reviews.

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