Feeding Frenzy: OvO – Gemma

OvO – Gemma

Release Date: 03rd October 2025||Genre: Electronic / Industiral|| Label: Artoffact Records

An ethnomusicological lesson in just getting it right.

Italian iconoclasts OvO have just dropped their eleventh studio album, Gemma, via Artoffact Records, marking an unforgettable twenty-five years in action. As any one listener could describe their music in twenty-five differing words to another, ranging from dance, doom, sludge, synth, primitive, orbital, this ambiguity continues to allow regrowth and exploration rather than unidentifiable resurgence. Gemma’s first single, Opale, features the vocals of Lord Spikeheart, a kindred spirit and Kenyan techno-metal phenom whose dance with OvO gleefully twists the elusive genre and provokes what is yet to come. Translated from Italian as “gem” and also as “the bud of a plant,” OvO founders Stefania Pedretti and Bruno Dorella describe Gemma as “a manifesto of transformation.” Stefania’s own life-altering experiences, in recent years stands, testament to these themes and profoundly marks Gemma, as the eccentric and mercurial duo’s 25th year in action.

Alan Dubin, lead shrieker of avant-metal legends Khanate, gives the album his seal of approval, stating: “Gemma oozes like a wound that refuses to heal, pulsing with beauty, rot, and rebirth. OvO haven’t just made an album — they’ve summoned a living, screaming thing from the raw meat of existence.” Gemma is saturated in familial coldness. There’s an eeriness behind Pedretti’s otherworldly vocals, tethered to Dorella’s stark, yet trudging beats and gripped by the sludgy, layered stringed depths we know and love. Decibel Magazine hit the nail on the head, hailing the band’s sound as “a David Lynch dance party.” At times, Gemma however feels remorseful to me. The reflective day after said party, as the sun creeps over the horizon and memories begin to return, eleventh track, Fossil, encompasses this well with slower and trippier demure.

With well over 1000 live shows behind them, and what seems like a distinct effort to double that in their current European tour, OvO continues their metamorphic journey, spinning the familiar, and much loved, duo’s distinct experimental electronic, industrial / metal sounds with their hunger of perpetual reinvention.

A+

AVZD