OSMIUM: OSMIUM (digital, INVADA, June 2025)

Osmium is, of course, the heaviest of heavy metals, which makes it kind of a brilliant band name. I have to say, this isn’t what you’d probably imagine if you tried to conjure up the heaviest of heavy metal. It would probably be more helpful to describe this as the most experimental of experimental metal. Which is maybe not a huge surprise when you learn that it is a collab between Hildur Guðnadóttir, James Ginzburg aka emptyset, Rully Shabara out of the Javanese band Senyawa who wikipedia describe as spanning avant-folk and neotribal and doom metal, and the sound designer Sam Slater.

It all makes even more sense when you see what they’re playing: Slater has “a self-oscillating drum he custom designed with KOMA Elektronik”; Ginzburg has eschewed his electronics and programming in favour of “a device he developed himself based on the monocord“; Guðnadóttir’s halldorophone is about the most conventional thing here. The result is a combination of rhythmical thumping string sounds which are largely monotonic with mutations of timbre taking the place of mere melody, underpinning a swirling mass of scraping thudding droning noises that refuse to be pinned down.

And we need to talk about Shabara’s vocals. He grunts. He pants. He hiccups. He chants repeated syllables. He never really comes close to words in any human language, as far as I can tell. I guess you could draw a line between this and death metal vocals, but it would be a thin and wobbly line. It’s pretty awesome.

This is heady stuff and not to be taken lightly. It is tribal and animalistic and it refuses to give you any conventional points of reference to cling onto. Without the correct mental framing, listening to it can be a little bit like being trapped in the middle of someone else’s bad peyote trip. But once you’ve got your head around it, it’s actually deeply enjoyable. And, you know something, I might be totally wrong here, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the band were having quite a lot of fun when they made it. It’s a rich brew that you just kind of need to surrender yourself to, and let it soak into you.

I bought this from Boomkat. They call it Dark Ambient / Drone / Metal and Folk / Roots.