There are certain records that make you wonder why so many stoner bands insist on playing everything for twice as long as necessary. The Grotesque Within is one of them. OREYEON have squeezed seven tracks into a little over 36 minutes, and there’s enough happening here to keep things interesting without any lengthy detours into aimless guitar worship. It’s their fourth album, and the Italians sound considerably more interested in writing proper songs than showing off how much fuzz their amplifiers can produce.
OREYEON formed in northern Italy back in 2014, with members coming from WOODWALL, MEXICAN MUD and ARMY OF ANGRY YOUTH. Their early material was rooted firmly in heavy seventies rock and BLACK SABBATH, but the band gradually started experimenting with more melodic and progressive arrangements. Ode to Oblivion already showed signs of that development in 2019, and Equations for the Useless took things further three years later. The new album is darker than either, though it hasn’t abandoned the band’s fondness for a good, dirty riff.
The Seattle influence is pretty hard to miss. Richard Silvaggio has a melodic, slightly mournful vocal style that occasionally brings Layne Staley to mind, while some of the guitar harmonies wouldn’t sound entirely out of place on an ALICE IN CHAINS record. There’s also a little SOUNDGARDEN in the heavier moments. I wouldn’t say OREYEON have discovered anything particularly new with this combination, but they’ve found a comfortable way of working those influences into their own music. The vocals are particularly important. Silvaggio doesn’t spend the entire album trying to overpower the guitars, and that gives the darker melodies room to breathe.
“Echoes of Old Nightmares” makes a strong opening statement, while the two halves of “Nothing but Impurities” take slightly different approaches to the band’s sound. The first is more tense and brooding, the second more openly indebted to grunge. The division works well enough, although I wonder whether the two pieces might have been even more interesting as a single extended composition. That’s one of the few occasions where I wouldn’t have minded OREYEON giving themselves a little more space.
The title track ventures into progressive territory without making a great fuss about it. The guitars wander away from the main riff for a while, but there’s always something recognisable to return to. “Something over There” has an especially strange bass introduction, one of those little details that gives a song an identity before the rest of the instruments have properly arrived. Neither piece needs an elaborate conceptual explanation to make its point.
The heavier side of the record comes through particularly well on “I’m Your Mistake” and the closing “Dead Puppet Eyes”. The latter has enough doom in its bloodstream to satisfy anyone who came here expecting something suitably miserable. It also shows how comfortably the band can move between slow, oppressive passages and more melodic writing. Not every riff is a revelation, of course. A few of them sound like things we’ve heard before, and the occasional ALICE IN CHAINS resemblance is a bit too close for comfort. But there’s enough personality in the arrangements to prevent the record from becoming a nostalgia exercise.
This is apparently the first OREYEON album produced entirely by the band themselves. It certainly hasn’t resulted in the kind of muddy mess that sometimes passes for authenticity in stoner rock. The instruments have enough separation, the bass sounds substantial, and the guitars retain their rough edges. More importantly, the vocals sit naturally within the music. Given how much these songs depend on melody, burying Silvaggio beneath a mountain of distortion would have been a particularly stupid decision.
I wouldn’t be surprised if The Grotesque Within brings OREYEON a few listeners who normally have little patience for stoner rock. There’s a good deal of grunge here, the songwriting is relatively economical, and the heavier passages have some genuine bite. Thirty-six minutes later, I’m left wanting another song rather than desperately reaching for the stop button. That’s not something I can say about every album in this particular corner of heavy music.
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Released by Heavy Psych Sounds on February 13th, 2026
