To celebrate their 25th anniversary, OvO released their eleventh album entitled Gemma. While venturing even further into experimentation, the band has maintained its distinctive sound, evolving its music towards something innovative.
It’s not easy to find a band that, after 25 years, continues to evolve its sound while remaining recognisable and maintaining the same attitude, all the while bringing innovation to its music. Well, OvO are that band. Now, the duo, consisting of Bruno Dorella and Stefania Pedretti, has released Gemma on the Canadian label Artoffact Records. As the band said, Gemma is an “alchemical passage through the elements” that seeks to foster “new weird life”. Named after chemical elements, the eleven tracks on Gemma (Italian for “gem”) — such as “Stagno” (“Tin”), “Opale” (“Opal”) and “Cobalto” (“Cobalt”) — tell the story of their evolution through alchemical/sonic transitions better than words ever could.
The band explores its sound by moving between Noise, Metal, Electronic and experimental music. This approach maintains the primordial energy of OvO while broadening its horizons. Despite this evolution, listeners can recognise that the band is embracing the tension that defines them: a balance between chaos and harmony, and between violence and introspection.
Gemma makes more pronounced use of electronics than in the past, creating atmospheres that oscillate between the danceable and the disturbing. Tracks such as “Opale”, featuring Lord Spikeheart, showcase a notable Industrial and EBM influence, while “Diamante” (“Diamond”) features an unusual contrast in the form of a cello, which softens the chaos. These choices demonstrate OvO’s commitment to expanding their musical language without compromise.
Despite the innovations, the distinctive sound of OvO remains fully identifiable. The vocal aggression, theatricality and physicality of the sound are still there, but they are presented in a more refined way. The result is an album that appears transitional but is, in reality, a powerful, meaningful and conscious milestone in their discography. In an interview with Impattosonoro, the band described Gemma “as a primordial dance — a means of exorcising and regenerating their musical language”.
For those familiar with OvO’s sound, it may take several listens to fully appreciate the album. Several online articles agree that it is a challenging album, yet it remains powerful and consistent with the band’s previous work. The public, on the other hand, definitely appreciates this new work: long-time fans undoubtedly appreciate the electronic direction that the album takes, while newcomers to the band see it as a gateway to exploring the discography of a group that has brought the same attitude without compromise to stages across Europe for 25 years.
Ultimately, we can conclude that Gemma cements OvO’s reputation as one of the most consistent and courageous acts in the Italian experimental music scene. It is an album that explores transformation and the balance between chaos and light, destruction and rebirth. It is not an album that you will love immediately, but it will grow on you over time. Indeed, we can agree that the album is a “rare gem capable of shining in the darkness of music unafraid to get its hands dirty with the living matter of sound”.
