.Idiot Savants

Who cares that Born of Osiris doesn't know Danzig? It's too busy pushing deathcore into new territory.

When a very popular online metal magazine interviews your band and
your bass player confesses — or, more accurately, brags —
that he’s never heard of Glenn Danzig, you have to expect some negative
reactions in the comments section. Of course, when your band is
Chicago-bred metalcore act Born of Osiris, and your debut full-length
A Higher Place rockets into position No. 73 in the Billboard
200, your profile might be raised a bit, drawing to the scene of the
crime all kinds of pissed-off music fans who’ve never even heard of
you. Well, that’s exactly happened with the poor lads in Born of
Osiris.

Even the band’s fans seemed to scratch their heads. After all, how
can guys who play such complex, encyclopedic, and mind-blowing music be
so ignorant of its history? Indeed, Born of Osiris walks the finest of
lines between supersize technical death metal and epic, cosmic-powered
prog-rock. So how could the band claim with a straight face to have
avoided the fellow responsible for the Misfits, arguably one of the
most influential American punk bands of all time? Was it a joke done to
irritate punks?

“Not at all. Our bassist David [Darocha] honestly didn’t know,” Born
of Osiris guitarist Lee McKinney laughed during a recent interview.
“Personally, I was very much into punk growing up, and I have always
loved Danzig. But our bassist … well, he had never heard of the man
or his music. And I can understand the insane reaction. Danzig has a
real place in people’s hearts. He’s got a song in Guitar Hero
II
, and we were playing it on the bus the other day. Our bassist
learns quickly, because he instantly recognized it: ‘Hey, that’s
Danzig, isn’t it, guys.'”

Now that one of the best and brightest bands in extreme music is
being educated on music courtesy of a video game, there won’t be any
obstacles in the way of achieving greatness. Unless you consider Born
of Osiris keyboardist Joe Buras to be more of a liability than a secret
weapon. In between vocalist Ronnie Canizaro’s mid-range growl and
drummer Cameron Losch’s devastating breakdowns, Buras finds enough
space to get all Rick Wakeman (that’s the Yes keyboardist, in case you
don’t know) on listeners’ ears, with sweeping, cinematic runs that add
whole new dimensions to the average metalcore formula. Indeed, more
than one critic has characterized the approach as “Danny
Elfmanesque.”

“The Elfman comparison is always interesting,” said McKinney.
“Actually, it’s our drummer Cameron who’s the big-time Elfman fan,”
McKinney admitted. “He helped put the new album’s intro song together.
It’s a great mood setter and very atmospheric.”

Atmosphere and ambience are only one part of the Born of Osiris
equation, however. The other consists of mind-scrapingly perilous
guitar blasts emitted by McKinney and his fellow ax-man Tosin Abasi;
together they don’t so much perform as dangerously flirt with carpal
tunnel syndrome.

But how did the band manage to get the attention of
small-but-celebrated California indie label Sumerian Records when
everyone was still in high school? “They found us on MySpace randomly,”
McKinney said. “At the time, our lyrics were on the less serious side,
because we were all sixteen years old. The lyrics were all jokes, we
were all juniors in high school and had nothing to say. ‘Are you guys
serious?’ the label asked us. ‘If not, can you be?'”

So Born of Osiris got real serious. Once you endure a lethal track
like “Elimination” from A Higher Place, with its crushing,
off-kilter rhythms and elegant keyboard flourishes, you’ll feel like
the band’s namesake, an Egyptian god of the underworld adrift on a ship
of gold and directed straight at the sun.

After seeing the band live, Sumerian signed McKinney and crew. It
was the final test, and Born of Osiris passed with an A-plus. A
Higher Place
cinches the band an advanced degree. Now if only
Sumerian had administered a test on Punk and Metal Artists 101, a
notion that causes the young guitarist to laugh again. “We have more to
say now that we’re no longer teenagers,” he said. “But we probably
still have more to learn about the history of music.”

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