In an age where attention spans have gotten absurdly short and with most artists catering to that trend, it’s so refreshing to hear long songs again! A Thousand Doors runs for 14 minutes and is filled with all manner of melodies, instrumentation, time signatures, grooves and moods. The song is a story in and of itself, and an enjoyable one at that.

Oracle’s Eye is a 4-piece neoclassical symphonic progressive mathcore band (in their own many words) from Kolkata. The band was conceptualized in 2020 with its current lineup officially completed in 2022. They draw their inspirations from Dream Theater, Opeth, Tool, King Crimson and the like; this makes enormous sense on first listen. They describe their material as having an overall dark atmospheric vibe with a few uplifting moments peppered in. This song nicely covers all those bases.

There is a lot to unpack in this ‘long’ song, and what a bold first release from a relatively new band it is. Off the bat, A Thousand Doors feels like a collection of 2 to 3-minute-long snippets of various musical ideas but ends up making sense as a cohesive piece. There are many delightful ideas throughout the song that will catch you off-guard, like a lovely fill on the bass guitar around the 3-minute mark, a surprising breakdown in the early stages of the track, which is immediately followed by a jaunty little section with a fun vocal accompaniment. Said section is oddly reminiscent of the musical theme of a brilliant indie game called ‘Return of the Obra Dinn’ (if you know, you know.) The band sensibly includes bits in A Thousand Doors that will delight fans of genres not advertised on the surface, including an acoustic section in the song’s later stages and an enjoyable guitar solo that rides triumphantly atop a big wave of sound. The production on the track is clean and precise, and one would find it hard to imagine this as the sound of a 4-piece act.

It should be very interesting to see Oracle’s Eye explore and develop their sound further, with hopefully even more twisted song structures in the future. For now, they are off to a great start with A Thousand Doors and hopefully, a number of listens.