Bleak, fiercely heavy, distorted and yet so close to the soul: Oyaarss's debut album is an impressive work of pulsions, subtlety and coldness. Tapping from electronic experimentations as much as from metal atmospheres, "Bads" builds massive tracks of noisy percussions towering on the most desolate icy soundscapes. Something to close you eyes to or to head-bang along, a highly gifted album of gritty strings, antagonistic beats and detailed builds-up; a colossal, self-imposing work of extremely rare power and depth. (Get this on CD / as digital files) "It would work better to have a picture with no trace of humanity on it". Oyaarss's remark about the artwork to his album is an accurate way to approach this release. Cold and toweringly massive, "Bads" ("Hunger" in Latvian) is both a deeply emotional affair and the bleakest of creations. Even though the wandering listener might encounter spoken poems and touching melodies, there isn't much compassion in this monster of an album, this "Hunger" spawning more from empty landscapes and scraping frequencies than from a human actor. Doom-ridden, intense, desperate and rooted in a deep sense of disorientation, Oyaarss's "Bads" is this act's first album, following the self release digital demo "Smaida Greizi Nakamiba" ("The Future Smiling Wryly") and a passionate encounter of musical genres. Moving with a tempo inspired by dubstep's infamous 140 bpm but building dense, ever changing layers of noises in a metal-inspired way, not afraid hardcore beats (used in a very un-hardcore way), and all the while infusing tracks with a care of details coming from experimental electronica, "Bads" is something to head-bang to, to dream (in)to, or just to listen with care and attention. It might be Oyaarss's debut full length, but the way it marries styles and emotions with subtlety and ease shows the experience acquired by this musician with his previous remix works (for example for Cloaks, Amenra or the classical composers Peteris Vasks and, Zbigniew Preisner). Expect neither a dancefloor record with "Bads" nor one of these sterile, robotic creations made of VST-geekery. If there is no humanity on the cover of this album, it is because its music is full of pulsions, desires and emotions. "Bads" takes over its listener's psyche unexpected and in its entirety, imposing its bleak and desperate atmospheres with massive, relentless, unmissable soundscapes and percussions. In the end, Oyaarss's sheer confrontation is what might make you more humane.