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- Hi guys, welcome to VENTS! How have you been?
Busy in the best possible way. We have been living in that strange middle ground where our new album The Outfit already exists and has been with us for a while, but the outside world has not heard it yet. It feels like those few minutes right before you step onstage, when the room is dark and you can sense the lights about to snap on. We also had a really exciting year live, branching out into Europe and testing a couple of the new songs on fresh audiences while trying not to give too much away. Behind the scenes we were secretly floating the album in selected circles, and the response was definitely encouraging. That’s what ultimately brought us to joining forces with Inertial Music for this release, so we’re feeling pretty psyched.
- The Outfit arrives May 15 via Inertial Music. At what point did you realize this album was going to be a step forward rather than just a continuation of Mondo Fiction?
Delving into dangerous territory is what makes it interesting. We believe every new thing we do should be a step forward, and if the material feels exciting while we’re writing it, arranging it, and then playing it together in a room, we know we’re on the right track. With The Outfit we explored new areas and unearthed ideas that had been living inside us for a while, and they naturally brought out more of that ’70s crime-film tension, Spaghetti Western drama, and vintage-horror haze. The arrangements got bolder, the melodies more memorable, the atmosphere more enigmatic, and the emotional swings more extreme. It is definitely a step forward from Mondo Fiction, in the same way Mondo Fiction was a step forward from Ulterior Motives.
- Your new single “In Plain Sight” drops March 13 alongside a video. Why was this the right track to introduce the world to The Outfit?
“In Plain Sight” was one of the first songs we worked on. It established the feel and gave a clear direction to The Outfit. It gets the point across about what Opensight is musically: the enigmatic opening, then the surge of energy, a real sense of sonic danger, and melodies that feel thematic and film-like, so you understand the album’s identity right away. Lyrically it works almost like a manifesto: clarity of vision, passionate authenticity, and a hunger for adventure, but all cloaked in secrecy and mystery. It is that idea of moving through the world with an inner fire that burns far too bright to stay hidden.
The video mirrors that tension. It frames the band being auditioned by The Director, on the edge of induction into The Outfit, one of the higher spheres within The Director’s Cult, and it plays it as something both celebratory and unsettling.
- You’ve described the album as heavy, melodic, eerie, and sinister — inspired by grindhouse grit, ’70s crime-film tension, Spaghetti Western drama, and vintage-horror haze. How did those cinematic textures shape the songwriting process?
We grew up feeling captivated by heavy music in the same way we are entranced by cult cinema, old scores, grainy visuals, and even vintage videogame music, so it all coexists comfortably as part of the same universe. Anything that touches deeply tends to surface in the writing naturally.
Often a song will begin with a very specific mood rather than a “riff” as such. For example, a section might feel like a ’70s thriller theme, like the intro to “In Plain Sight”, and the track naturally grows outward from that atmosphere. Or you get something that feels almost operatic with a Spaghetti Western edge, like the thematic melody in “Killer Outfit”, and we build the arrangement around that. Each track has its own intention or character, and the riffs come later, written to serve that intention. We spend time on the songs until they feel right, but we try not to overthink it, we let those textures seep in and permeate the music.
- OPENSIGHT have often been compared to boundary-pushing bands like Faith No More, Opeth, and Iron Maiden. Do you consciously draw from those influences, or do they surface naturally?
They surface naturally, mainly because we grew up on those bands and we are fans at heart. A lot of what gets called “classic” or “traditional” now was genuinely daring when it first appeared, and that fearless sense of freedom is the most inspiring part to us.
That said, many of our initial sparks come from outside rock altogether, from cult film music, grindhouse themes, vintage videogame soundtracks, and those kinds of atmospheres. Then it all gets translated through a band like us, players who came up on hard rock and heavy metal, so it ends up sounding the way it sounds.
With our previous album Mondo Fiction we even had reviewers compare us to bands we had never heard of, and when we checked them out the shared thread was not a specific style. It was that same permission to do whatever the band wants to do with the music.
- There’s a strong sense of atmosphere in your music, but it never loses urgency. How do you balance immersive soundscapes with raw, driving momentum?
A lot of tracks begin with a very specific vibe we want to capture, which keeps everything purposeful. The textures and atmosphere actually push the songs forward and become part of the momentum. Sometimes a song grows lots of details and turns, then we find its true essence by stripping it down and making it more effective, which is interesting with us coming from a metal and prog background where a “more is more” mindset can be the default.
Songs feel like stories: length does not matter as long as the tension keeps moving. If it feels alive when we play it, the balance is right. And even with our love of expansive ideas, the longest track on the album, “Defying Eye,” is under six minutes, and it’s a a standout track with a big melodic payoff.
- Some ideas for the album reportedly came from dreams. Can you share one moment where a subconscious spark turned into a finished song?
There were nights of waking up with a motif or melody ringing in the mind that had to be captured before it vanished. Sometimes you have a song that is a strong idea but it will not fully reveal itself, and the missing piece suddenly arrives from the subconscious. When you’re in “writing mode” you’re thinking about the songs constantly, so those sparks can hit at the strangest times. The closing track, “Delusion,” is a good example. It came from that half-awake state, jumping out of bed while it was still dark to record it on a phone. Those recordings are still there somewhere in the vault.
- You’ve said playing these new songs live feels “entrancing.” How important was it to write material that translates powerfully from studio to stage?
Very important. Writing and demoing feels intimate and it is powerful, but even then you are picturing the band in your mind, playing the song together. And once we get together and play is when a song truly comes to life. And then live, with an audience, is even more entrancing, with us slipping deeper into the same scene and our eyes going a little more distant.
- After praise from outlets like Metal Hammer and Powerplay Magazine, did you feel pressure going into this record — or freedom?
It’s always encouraging when people respond emotionally and say kind things, especially because we tend to approach things from a place of freedom, so that feedback makes us feel like it’s worth following our instincts. At the same time, after you finish a body of work there’s that brief paranoia that you’ve used up the best ideas, and that’s where the pressure comes in. But once we start writing again, different paths reveal themselves and new sounds appear, which is exactly what happened with The Outfit.
- The title The Outfit suggests identity, image, maybe even a collective force. What does the title represent in the context of the album’s themes?
On the surface, the title The Outfit nods to our crime-film attire of black suits and blood-red shirts. But within the wider theme it also refers to The Outfit as an inner circle, one of the highest spheres within a worldwide shadow organisation called The Director’s Cult, which we are slowly learning more and more about. The album touches on the ideals of The Director’s Cult and celebrates Opensight’s induction into The Outfit, as portrayed in the video for “In Plain Sight.”
- With new visuals, fresh music, and more announcements on the horizon, what chapter does The Outfit represent in the OPENSIGHT story — reinvention, refinement, or something more cinematic?
All three, with The Outfit there has been reinvention as we are making things more dangerous by exploring paths that were unknown to us in the past. Our identity remains intact but is certainly transforming as we move forward.
All three. It is refinement in terms of focus and confidence, but it is also reinvention because we deliberately pushed into darker, riskier territory that we had not explored before. The identity is intact, but it is transforming. If Mondo Fiction introduced the language, The Outfit is where the camera moves closer, the lighting gets dimmer, and the story stops asking politely.
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