Closed Session EP (2021)

There’s nothing quite like seeing a band bare it all live—no tricks, no polish, no prerecorded fluff to hide behind. Oproer, the Belgian group whose name literally translates to “uprising” or “revolt,” recorded their debut EP in one take, filmed and captured with a rawness that turns the whole thing into a spell. You don’t watch it, you feel it buzz through your chest like static.

There’s a wild-eyed theatricality to Oproer’s sound that immediately brings Talking Heads to mind, especially in opener Mad Affair—a track that walks a tightrope between psychotic and playful, theatrical and haunted. It’s jumpy. It’s jagged. The synths don’t fill space so much as puncture it. And frontman Dries doesn’t sing so much as channel something—maniacal, calculated, campy in the best possible way. It’s impossible not to lean in.

Then comes Status Quo, and suddenly you’re skanking through a dystopian new wave jazz-ska underworld. There are whiffs of The Cat Empire in its off-kilter grooves, but this is funk that’s been through a blender and wired with voltage. The synth solo? Unhinged. It rips through the mix with a kind of precision and chaos that.

Get Get Get plays like a hypnotic snake-charm ritual in the middle of a protest. A writhing, Middle Eastern-tinged riff coils and sways while the vocal delivery—half-chant, half-megaphone rap sermon—cements the band’s unique DNA. It’s cultural fusion used not as flavor but as fuel.

But the crown jewel of the EP might just be So Fly. What begins with a gentle sense of space becomes an avalanche of movement, harmony, and release. It’s a song that builds and builds until you feel like you’re ascending right out of your seat. The synths swell like your chest does when something truly hits, and by the end it’s hard to imagine any better way to describe this than a full-on out-of-body experience. You don’t listen to So Fly—you jump onto its back and let it take you wherever it wants.

There Was Never Love closes the EP on a high-concept, high-groove note. It’s impossible to pin down. Built on a skeleton that’s either groove-forward or melody-first—who knows, maybe neither—it moves like something dreamed into being. Somehow it still makes complete bodily sense. The structure is unconventional, but your spine knows what to do with it. It’s one of those rare tracks that feels like it shouldn’t work, but absolutely does.

Oproer’s Closed Session EP doesn’t sound like a band getting started. It sounds like a manifesto, shouted through a megaphone on the edge of a rooftop. The fusion is fearless, the vibe is magnetic, and the live chemistry is undeniable. It’s one thing to debut with a promise. It’s another to debut with a full revolution already in motion.