Progressive metal often moves at a glacial pace, with bands dedicating years to a single album; consequently, a new release announcement is a momentous occasion, born from a long period of intense, focused effort. It is therefore with considerable note that the Canadian quintet Omnivide has announced its new EP, ‘Arise,’ scheduled for release on October 10, 2025, through the American label Seek & Strike.

Arriving just over eighteen months after their lauded debut, the five-song collection represents not merely a follow-up but a moment of deliberate and accelerated artistic evolution.

For a band operating with such creative urgency and strategic clarity, the choice of the more concentrated EP format is a statement in itself. It is a tactical decision that allows Omnivide to maintain the significant momentum gained in 2024, offering a potent, focused demonstration of their growth without the protracted development cycle of a sophomore full-length album.

This is the work of a band that, as they themselves have stated, “felt ready to make something better in a shorter time frame,” signaling a conscious and confident command of their own trajectory.

Omnivide: From an Echo to a Form

The velocity with which Omnivide now moves stems from the patient and scholarly foundation upon which their sound was built. Formed in 2020 in Moncton, New Brunswick, the band’s core emerged from the remnants of an Opeth tribute project named Sunbird. This origin is not a footnote but the key to their entire musical grammar.

To perform the work of a band as compositionally labyrinthine as Opeth requires more than casual appreciation; it demands a forensic deconstruction of song structure, harmonic language, and dynamic interplay. The members of Omnivide—Samuel Frenette on guitars and vocals, Nicolas Pierre Boudreau on guitars, Alex Cormier on bass, Samuel Lavoie on keyboards, and Marc-André Richard on drums—thus began their creative journey not as novices, but as students immersed in one of progressive death metal’s most significant texts.

This period of deep study informed their debut album, ‘A Tale of Fire,’ an ambitious, self-produced effort released independently on March 22, 2024. Written over two years, the record reflected a patient, do-it-yourself work ethic, fusing the stylistic pillars of progressive, death, and symphonic metal into a cohesive whole that garnered significant critical acclaim.

Reviewers praised its technicality and compositional confidence, though some noted areas for refinement, such as an under-mixed bass and orchestrations that relied heavily on synthesizers—a clear baseline from which the “bigger orchestral arrangements” promised for ‘Arise’ can be measured as a direct and intentional improvement.

Following the debut’s release, the band underwent a remarkable professionalization. An extensive fifteen-date tour across Eastern Canada proved instrumental, transforming the band from a regional act into a national entity with a growing following.

This groundwork culminated in their signing with Seek & Strike in July 2024, a mere four months after their independent release. Such a rapid ascent from a self-released debut to an American record deal is exceptionally rare in the niche ecosystems of extreme metal, pointing to a band that possesses not only artistic vision but also a high degree of strategic focus.

A Place Within the Canon

Omnivide’s sound is a sophisticated synthesis, a conversation between three distinct but now deeply intertwined lineages of metal history. Their work can be understood as a contemporary expression built from a canon that has been developing for over four decades.

The first of these lineages is progressive metal itself, which emerged in the mid-1980s as bands like Fates Warning and Queensrÿche began to merge the aggression and amplified power of heavy metal with the compositional complexity and experimentalism of 1970s progressive rock. This movement established a mandate for technical virtuosity, unorthodox song structures, and conceptual depth that remains a core tenet of the style.

The second crucial thread is the melodic death metal that erupted from Gothenburg, Sweden, in the mid-1990s. Bands such as At the Gates, Dark Tranquillity, and In Flames forged what became known as the “Gothenburg Sound” by infusing the ferocity of death metal with the intricate, harmonized guitar melodies of the New Wave of European Heavy Metal.¹

This innovation introduced a potent new emotional and harmonic vocabulary into extreme metal. The final element is the symphonic grandeur that was codified in the late 1990s by European acts like Therion and Nightwish, who integrated full-scale orchestral arrangements, choirs, and operatic vocal traditions to give metal a truly cinematic scope.

A band forming in 2020 inherits this entire history as a unified and accessible palette. The boundaries that once separated these subgenres have become permeable. Omnivide, therefore, should be seen as third-wave synthesists. They are not pioneering a new fusion so much as they are acting as sophisticated architects, constructing a new and compelling structure from the established, high-quality materials of the metal tradition. Their innovation lies in the elegance and confidence of the synthesis itself.

Enter ‘Void,’ the Blueprint for ‘Arise’

The lead single from the new EP, ‘Void,’ serves as the primary evidence for this refined compositional approach. The band has explicitly designated it as the foundational track for the record, a piece that “encapsulates our intentions with the music for this EP.” The six-minute composition is a masterclass in controlled dynamics.

It moves fluidly between passages of immense, down-tuned guitar riffs and moments of quiet, atmospheric introspection, fulfilling the band’s promise of a “contrast of high intensity and laid-back sections.” The interplay between Frenette’s guttural growls and soaring clean vocals maps directly onto this musical duality, creating a sonic narrative that mirrors the song’s lyrical theme: a vivid expression of “the desperation felt in times of seemingly insurmountable struggle, the refusal to give up no matter how badly the odds are stacked against us and the growth that takes place when one chooses to face such challenges.”

The accompanying music video provides a powerful visual metaphor for this musical synthesis. The aesthetic is built on a deliberate duality, weaving together raw, kinetic footage of the band’s performance with “intricate, hand-drawn animations that mirror the track’s dramatic interplay of light and dark.” This is not a merely decorative choice. The performance footage embodies the visceral, corporeal energy of the band’s death metal foundation.

The animations, by contrast, represent the cerebral, composed, and artistic nature of their progressive and symphonic ambitions. The editing, which seamlessly integrates these two visual styles, performs the band’s core musical act: the fusion of what they term “brutality and beauty.” The video thus functions as a visual manifesto, offering the viewer a key to understanding the band’s entire artistic project.

The Cartography of an ‘Arise’

Synthesizing all available information, the ‘Arise’ EP emerges as a cohesive and conceptually rigorous work. The very structure of the tracklist suggests a deliberate five-act narrative arc.

The titles—‘Prelude,’ ‘Void,’ ‘Tyrannical Saviour,’ ‘Omnipotent,’ and ‘Arise’—trace a classic dramatic progression from introduction and conflict to climax and resolution, perfectly aligning with the EP’s overarching theme of overcoming adversity. This transforms the 26-minute runtime from a simple collection of songs into a unified, purposeful journey, making the short format a distinct narrative strength.

Furthermore, the band’s own language surrounding the EP—their repeated use of words like “evolution,” “elevate,” and the desire to have “cranked them up another level”—reveals a striking degree of artistic self-awareness. This is not the sound of a young band searching for an identity; it is the sound of a band that has already found one and is now focused on its intensification.

The promise of “more techy riffs, bigger orchestral arrangements, more progressive song structures” is a blueprint for vertical growth, for building a more intricate and powerful structure upon their established foundation.

This confidence is further evidenced by their investment in a professional production team, with mixing handled by François Fortin and mastering by Benoit Fecteau, and the commissioning of cover art from Marcel Leblanc—a significant step up from the self-produced nature of their debut and a clear signal of their professional ambitions.

The Road Made Manifest

This artistic statement will be carried directly to audiences with the announcement of the Arise tour, an extensive sweep of Eastern Canada scheduled from October to December 2025. The tour’s routing is a model of strategic territorial consolidation.

Performing in major hubs like Toronto and Montréal and also in smaller, often-overlooked markets such as Rimouski, Sherbrooke, and Tracadie, Omnivide executes a classic ground-game strategy to solidify a regional power base. This builds directly on the success of their 2024 tour, which was so crucial to their signing, and creates a strong home-field advantage that will serve as a launchpad for their stated goal of “touring farther abroad in the near future.”

Performing the ‘Arise’ EP in its entirety further elevates these concerts from standard gigs into premiere events, allowing audiences to experience the work’s conceptual narrative as a complete and uninterrupted whole.

The inclusion of supporting acts like the Ottawa-based deathcore unit Hatred Reigns and local act Nirthal for the Gatineau date suggests a carefully curated bill designed to create a cohesive and compelling live package for fans of modern, technical Canadian metal.

A Trajectory Defined

Ultimately, ‘Arise’ is more than a meticulously crafted EP; it is a declaration of intent. In a genre defined by patient evolution, Omnivide has chosen a path of deliberate acceleration, transforming their deep reverence for metal’s history into a launchpad for their own ascent.

The EP’s title is not merely a thematic arc but a mission statement, capturing the moment a band moves from being students of the canon to becoming its future architects. With ‘Arise,’ Omnivide is not just joining the conversation; they are poised to lead it.

Omnivide’s musical journey began with a deep study of a specific progenitor, Opeth, before evolving into a broader synthesis of styles. How does an artist’s clear lineage influence your perception of their work, and at what point does homage transform into a distinct and compelling new voice?

References

1. Benjamin Hillier, ‘Musical Practices in Early Melodic Death Metal,’ Journal of Music Research Online 11 (2022). ↩︎