Os – Tehom
Release Date: 4th November 2022
Label: Iron Bonehead
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal, Thrash.
FFO: Aparthiva Raktadhara, The True Mayhem.
Review By: Jason James
Hungarian metal merchants Os prepare to release their 2nd full length offering to the masses with Tehom.
The word Tehom has both a biblical and a more mythical meaning. The biblical root word is the Hebrew name for the vast ocean that covered the Earth before God made land masses. The more mythical tale is that Tehom is a Babylonian fire-breathing serpent and that she is the spirit expressed through the first stage in woman’s creation cycle: death and destruction of old patterns. They have taken this theme and sewed it into the very fabric of this album.
With track names such as Submerge and Abyss, they construct a world in a state of perpetual motion, from single cell organisms starting to double and take on more complex shapes to a world of primeval forces all scrambling for a foothold to stave off extinction. The music conjures up images of broiling seas filled with multiple gargantuan dark and terrible shapes, all writhing and wrestling for superiority in pitch darkness.
Tehom boasts six tracks, but in reality, there’s only really four. Track 1 sounds like an ominous interpretation of a ship that has submerged and is sinking to the bottom of the sea, punctuated with mantra-like chanting from the vocalist. Track 6 features a pulsating noise, a sound futuristic and alien in its makeup, but somehow ancient and powerful too.
There’s something missing, though. The band members are obviously working tremendously hard constructing this sound, and the musicianship is impressive. But it’s all very…quiet. Something in the quality of the recording is lacking. Even when you have headphones on and turn this up, it just doesn’t seem loud enough somehow. It’s a very strange feeling. This is the kind of record that should be trying to perforate your eardrums at every opportunity. There’s no real boom to the drums. They should thunder through your chest, but they don’t.
If the production was better, this would have got a higher rating. But unfortunately, Os are let down by the final result.
(2.5 / 5)
