“We wanted to have something hopeful,” says Colin Edwin of O.R.k’s latest, Screamnasium. It may be the most musically intense and perhaps heaviest release so far from the band, but the title belies the fact that the album was born out of the bond between bassist Edwin, vocalist LEF (Lorenzo Esposito Fornasari to his mum and dad), guitarist Carmelo Pipitone, and drummer Pat Mastelotto, and a collective desire to defy the prevailing gloom of the pandemic. “It wasn’t discussed, like, ‘Let’s do a happy song,’” says Edwin. “It just comes out the way you’re feeling. Despite the terrible stuff going on, you want to have hopefulness. And it’s harder to express that – it’s very easy to be miserable and doomy all the time.”
The band released their third album, , in became an outlet for the negativity everyone was battling. “One of the reasons we called the album was it’s about getting things out, it’s a feeling of catharsis, of release,” says Edwin. “We’ve all had the pent-up lockdown frustration and that’s definitely influenced the way things have come out. It’s a release and I think that’s come out in the music.”
