Source: Album Artwork
What happens if you take a bunch of heavy machinery and power tools and set them up to play guitars and drums? Nobody really knows because that’s ridiculous. You can hazard a guess though that it sounds something like Osiah‘s debut album ‘Terror Firma‘.
But this isn’t just a debut album. This is total devastation.
‘Hellbound‘ gets proceedings underway as a nightmarish soundscape gives way to aural violence; this opening 1:23 features guttural bellowing, ball-numbing blast beats, and stunning fretwork, which all serves as a perfect taster of the full album.
Rolling straight into ‘Dethronement of Gods‘, a song title has never been so believable. It is an utterly brutal assault of the senses and seeks not only to dethrone your gods, but to also smash that throne around their heads. ‘Brokden‘ begins to throw in some unexpected tempo switches too and just highlights how tight this band’s sound is. The precision of every breakdown and pause is exemplary and Ricky Lee Roper’s vocal performance shines as one of the most terrifyingly brilliant and brilliantly terrifying on the scene.
But it’s the precision of the instrumentation that pitches this release as arguably the best deathcore album in the past 5 years. This is a band who has studied their craft; the blast beats and double-pedaling is awe-inspiring, the vocals are as brutal and vicious as you can imagine, the guitars are so in sync that you’d be forgiven for thinking they’re played by a hive mind. So as much as the purists and detractors can take a look at the running time and say it’s too long, and as much as the final third begins to feel as if you have heard it, you cannot get over how tight Osiah’s sound is. This is a proper band and they’re here to rip your throat out.
Fans of technical deathcore ought to be jubilant at this new arrival whilst simultaneously running for the nearest door frame or steel table to hide under, because this album could quite literally tear your house down. Crushing brutality has never sounded so impressive or so perfectly coordinated. ‘Plague Word‘ and ‘Subterranean Refuge‘ may well be two of the finest tracks we will see this year and the album itself will be on many end-of-year lists for all of rock and metal. Give it a listen and then another. And another. And… well, you get the picture.
