FUTURITY AND HUMAN DEPRESSIONS

"Futurity And Human Depressions" is the debut full-length studio album by Dutch progressive/thrash metal act Osiris. The album was released through Shark Records in 1991. Osiris was formed in 1985, but had a relatively short recording career with two demos and this album being released between 1989 and 1991. They changed their name to Circle of Emotions in 1992, released one demo under that monicker and then split-up.

The music on the album is technically well played progressive/thrash metal. I´d mention acts like Target and Realm as references, but I think there are slight nods toward acts like Fates Warning, Watchtower and especially Psychotic Waltz in the music too. The vocals alternate between raw thrash metal singing and higher pitched clean singing. A track like the opening track "Futurity (Something To Think About)" represents the progressive side of the band´s sound while their more thrash metal oriented side can be heard in a track like "Mass Termination". Both styles can be heard in all tracks though. Most tracks are rather complex in structure and several of them exceed the 6 minutes mark by a couple of minutes.

The musicianship is generally on a very high level and especially drummer Marc Fien deserves a special mention for his fantastic drumming on the album. The sound production is also very powerful and "Futurity And Human Depressions" comes off as a quality product. The songwriting is where the band are still a bit imature, and especially the vocal lines could have made more impact if they had been more memorable. So while there are absolutely brilliant moments on the album it´s not perfect to my ears and a 3.5 star (70%) rating is fair.