The music of Omega Lithium consists of vocals from frontwoman Mya Mortensen (and occasional vocals by guitarist Malice Rime) over a bed of electronic noises and crunchy metal guitar riffs and pounding drums. Mya’s voice is deep and powerful with an air of gothic to it, and certainly sets the band apart from many industrial metal bands and other female fronted bands. There is no operatic or soaring soprano here, and it’s a nice change from the high-pitched female vocals typically found in gothic metal. Whether natural or distorted, Mya’s vocals shine through and create a dark, often creepy and certainly emotional atmosphere.

There are some seriously great tracks on this album. "Andromeda" and the opener "Infest" feature a catchy riff and chorus and a very dark atmosphere, while "Stigmata", the band’s first single and video, opens with a soft intro, moving into heavy instrumentals and Mya’s deep gothic vocals and is among the strongest tracks on the album. "Dreams in Formaline" features distorted, vocals and electronic noises over a heavy riff, while "Snow Red" starts off with some dramatic piano that also moves into some heavy guitars and pounding drums.

This album is also very lyrically dark, many of the songs telling disturbing stories or exploring deep and dark emotions. "Nebula" tells of human fear and suffering during an alien invasion (sounds silly now, yes, but it’s much better if you read the lyrics yourself), while "Snow Red" is a twisted story about a boy killing his mother "to keep the memories untainted". The title track "Dreams in Formaline" explores "the curse of emotions" and being human, "Hollow March" is about the horrors of war, and the closer "Point Blank" describes the apocalypse and ultimate destruction of everything that humans have spent so long building and creating. This is certainly not a cheery album, but lyrically sound and reflective of the darkness of the music itself.

New bands are rarely perfect, as are debut albums, and Dreams in Formaline has a few downsides. The male vocals that we mentioned above serve little purpose and seem to have simply been thrown in to add some variety. They’re not particularly well done, either, which keeps tracks like "My Haunted Self" and "Factor: Misery" from being up there with the other tracks on the album in quality. My only other criticism is that there isn’t all that much variety on this album. The songs all have a similar tempo and the bedrock of crunchy instrumentals featured in every song doesn’t vary much either. There are no guitar solos and not much to put them in the forefront of the songs. If there were a few slower or faster paced songs here and there, the album could’ve come out much stronger.

Still, Omega Lithium have certainly released a strong debut, and have put themselves on the map. With some experience, they will probably grow to become one of the top industrial metal bands and certainly a force to be reckoned with. Hopefully, we’ll see a follow-up to Dreams in Formaline soon, and I can only expect it will be even better than this one.

Standout tracks include "Infest", "Stigmata", "Dreams in Formaline", "Andromeda", "Nebula" and "Point Blank". The album will be much more available after its scheduled North American release on April 6th, 2010.

7.5 / 10