Dreams Of Death and the Death Of Dreams is Obsess­ive Compulsive’s debut album, released on their own label, Voci­fer­ous Records, yes­ter­day. Over the course of the past few years, the band have released two EPs, and built up a strong, nation­wide fan base through tour­ing. They describe them­selves as dark punk/metal/alternative. Their metal influ­ences are pretty obvi­ous in the intro to Man vs. Machine, but then a Coheed & Cam­bria style bass­line throws it all out of the win­dow. The chorus is even more con­fus­ing — it draws inspir­a­tion from Brody Dalle’s vocal style, but is laid over a slower gui­tar track. The album slows down for the third track, The Decay of Hope, and Kelii’s vocals shine over a sim­pler musical background.

The band have worked tire­lessly to get their sound heard. Kelii says “we’re not so punk that we don’t want suc­cess but we’re doing things our way because we don’t trust the cor­por­ate greed of the music industry.” So the band have sold their records online, and at shows, and at all costs have avoided sign­ing up to a philo­sophy they don’t agree with.

Obsess­ive Com­puls­ive are destined for big things, and this album is proof. It is bril­liantly bal­anced, very well pro­duced and mastered, but fun­da­ment­ally, it’s good music.