What was I supposed to do?
Never any calm before the rain comes
Don’t check the mailbox
I couldn’t find the message and I made a big mistake
Julian Ash once trafficked in sleek, sleaze-laced synth shadows with his former project Harsh Symmetry, but under his latest guise, Omnihell, he kicks open a different door and lets in the cruel daylight — the kind that reveals stains in the carpet and lipstick on the collar. The project’s debut LP, Extreme Suffering, carries a title poised between anguish and a straight-faced joke delivered without a blink. Here, Ash steps forward, voice high in the mix, posture squared, the songs draped in analogue threads that hum and wobble as if they’ve been living hard since 1979.
He’s rummaging through proto-punk bones and 70s/80s alternative attic boxes, pulling out jangling guitars, brittle drum machines, and organs that sigh like old theater curtains. It’s not gothic in the cape-and-candles sense; it feels more like a late-night confession, spoken softly and wiped away by morning. The presentation has a wink, a little conceptual theatre, but the pulse here is flesh-and-blood songwriting. Sophisticated, sure. Elegant, even. Still beating.
Reminded opens the wound politely. A man circling the memory of a strong-willed woman, replaying half-remembered scenes like a film with missing reels. He swears he never hid, but he’s pinned to the past like a butterfly under glass. The post-punk guitar snaps into place, jangly bassline skipping under his croon, and suddenly you’re in The Smiths territory: heart on sleeve, collar up, chin trembling in the rain. Ash sings like he’s holding the photograph too close to his face.
Then comes Omniscium, devotion turned devotional hazard. He offers up soul, time, life itself for one more night. Sleepless, bargaining beneath metaphorical knives, intimacy equated with sacrifice. The hook climbs high and clean, the synths hovering with that 80s ache, and the song strides straight into Echo and the Bunnymen and The Colourfield country. It’s romantic theatre with a cracked mirror backstage.
Kurushimi, the oblique title track—its name translating to “pain,” “suffering,” “anguish,” or “hardship”—anchors the album as its uneasy centerpiece, revealing a subtly altered musical posture. Crisis paralysis. Overlooked warnings. Unopened messages. “Never any calm before the rain.” An ominous forecast from Omnihell, issued in a David Sylvian-caliber croon. The piano-and-bass-driven groove wears a jaunty, almost breezy mask, its wistful tone recalling rainfall against a windowsill. It could also slip comfortably into a Terry Hall set without raising an eyebrow. Regardless, Ash leans into the song’s melodic beauty with composure and control—poised, precise, quietly devastating.
On the next track, “Like Cathedrals,” love buckles beneath the burden of what goes unsaid. Devotion burns low. Time borrowed, then squandered. A marching, clockwork beat presses the song forward, drums crisp and declarative. The bridge opens like a sudden clearing, and the vocals stretch upward in a way that recalls Dead Can Dance: solemn, spacious, reaching for something holy even as it falls apart.
Leeches slinks in on a darker bassline, dependency and resentment locked in a clinch. He clings, he accuses, he pleads. Pride tangles with need. The track dips into deathrock hues before exploding into a wide chorus that feels almost triumphant in its bitterness. The Chameleons hover over this one, that sense of emotional altitude riding above the fray.
With War, heartbreak becomes enlistment. He pledges life and death to a cause already lost. The organ synths glow softly against a waltz backbeat, giving the whole thing a strange carousel sway. Jeff Buckley by way of The Smiths, with a carnival haze that tilts the room. Ash’s singing here is open, exposed, every syllable placed with care.
Six Legs is the party crasher. Social climbers skittering like insects, all money and mouth. He spits the satire with relish, guitars snapping in Chameleons/Gang of Four formation. There’s even a flash of Suicide in the mechanical undercurrent. It’s sharp, pointed, and just a little mean.
Freeze slows the blood. Grief was locking him in place after terrible news. Love as damage, guilt as frostbite. The production bends and warps, sound bending inward on itself. It brings Aztec Camera to mind, that sense of heartbreak wrapped in melody. Ash sounds stunned, like he’s just opened the letter.
Then the curtain jerks open for Burn, Heretic! – military march at the outset, all rigid rhythm, before the chorus flips into pure 1950s doo-wop drama. Roy Orbison hovers in the rafters. There’s even a whisper of Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch in the air, something cinematic and slightly unhinged. A visionary condemned by the mob, pride crumbling into panic. It’s theatrical, bold, and it works.
I’m Unsalvageable drifts in on a bassline that nods to MGMT, riding a late-70s–early-80s yacht rock glide. Alienation, financial strain, self-loathing dressed up as self-knowledge. Rat, opossum, vermin. He watches everyone else reinvent themselves while he treads water. The groove is deceptively smooth, the self-assessment brutal.
And finally, “Stings (Suffering)” circles the ache of unresolved attachment. Daydreams reopen wounds; absence equates with erasure. “Cold steel” between the eyes. The melody loops back on itself like a question never answered. Ash lets it hang there, no grand finale, just the quiet persistence of feeling.
Extreme Suffering feels like a man rifling through his own archive and finding songs where others might find excuses. Julian Ash steps out from the sleek silhouette of Harsh Symmetry and plants himself in full view. There’s style, and a sense of play, but also a willingness to stand still and sing the thing straight. Pain dressed in pop clothing; regret set to rhythm…a debut that walks tall in worn boots and knows exactly where it’s been.
Bravo.
Listen to Extreme Suffering below and order the album here.
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