Absum / Odz Manouk

Look, there's no point in mincing words here: you knew this was going to kick ass the second you saw that Odz Manouk was involved. If you wouldn't count Odz Manouk among your top, say, ten favorite black metal bands, then I doubt that you've ever heard them. This band has released just ten actual songs and each and every moment on all of them is better than the highlight of most black metal bands' entire careers. From the extremely heavy, downtuned buzzsaw guitars to the vaguely Middle Eastern flair to the serpentine sense of momentum throughout their music, Odz Manouk have pretty clearly found one of the most rock-solid formulas in the entire genre. Every song that this band has produced has established them as a legendary band in the making, and "The Esophagus" is no exception. Though it's sad that the band has been so quiet since this song's release, it's just so logic-defyingly astonishing that I can't be upset about it for too long.

This is the slowest song in the entire Odz Manouk catalog, featuring no blast beats whatsoever and sticking with a churning mid-paced tempo throughout its six-and-a-half minute running time. Within just 30 seconds, it's demonstrated a lot of the elements that define Odz Manouk as the powerhouse they are: flittery bits of dissonant lead guitar dance over a much heavier, doom-influenced rhythm section; a venomous and biting vulture-like vocal performance howls over the music; and most importantly, the entire presentation is almost oppressively heavy. The song shifts to some more immediately catchy riffs, which are essentially just as influenced by traditional doom as they are by black metal, before settling into a massive, slower riff for its last two minutes à la "The Scavenger". All-in-all, it's easily some of the most massive music in the ballpark of black metal.

"The Esophagus" is rather hard to compare to Odz Manouk's overall discography because there are only ten songs and this one is somewhat of an outlier, but rest assured that it's on the same near-otherworldly level of quality. My sole complaint would be that the end of the song is a bit abrupt, in that it concludes with a guitar solo that never seems to return to the main riff's motif before the song ends. Ideally, the song would've lasted another minute or two and had one final vocal section after the solo; but then again, this was pressed to a 7" vinyl record, so I suppose time constraints had to be taken into account. It's essentially a non-issue, as the rest of the song is amazing beyond your wildest imagination. Based merely on "The Esophagus", this split would be worth buying even if the band on the other side of the record were the shittiest thing ever.

Oh, wait, it's Absum. Turns out it is the shittiest thing ever. Or, well, was. Absum's contribution to the split, "The Rotting Sea", is surprisingly pretty great - I say "surprisingly" because this is the only thing the band have released since the absolutely awful Purgatoire 2007-2009. My main complaint about that tape, the production, has been addressed here: there seems to have been some degree of actual mixing applied to this one. The guitars are panned out, and the godawful buzzing that plagued the band's last release has somehow been excised. It's still raw, but in a pleasant sort of way rather than being actively irritating.

With the music polished up, you can actually appreciate what's going on, and it's admittedly pretty cool. I want to liken this to a rawer, sparser Ahab with less low end: the rhythm guitars are very faint and mostly echo on the outskirts of the music, while the focus is clearly on the melodies produced by the vaguely nautical lead guitars. For the majority of its running time, there isn't an awful lot going on. This is funeral doom that works entirely in terms of measures; there isn't much of a rhythmical element here aside from the methodical crushing drone that comes in at the start of every measure. Sometimes its time signature becomes a bit more loose, and the crashes come a little early or late, which produces a rather cool "drifting" effect.

Again, for the first four minutes, the song doesn't move much at all, instead just kind of drifting around without moving anywhere. But in the last minute or so of its running time, the song unexpectedly speeds up: the ancient (but not especially deep) growls give way to haunting chants, and the lead guitars shift from droning chords to a more soaring, downright beautiful progression that, again, wouldn't be out-of-place in an Ahab song (and one of the better ones, too!). The melody is astonishing, though it makes me wonder why the band couldn't have used that kind of melodies earlier in the song - or on Purgatoire 2007-2009, for that matter. It feels a bit awkward, having the song consist of four minutes of directionless droning followed by a single minute of actual movement which blows the previous section out of the water. Still, I enjoy both sections of the song, so Absum's side of the split definitely gets a thumbs-up from me.

All-in-all, this is definitely worth owning. Absum's contribution is pretty cool (but dear god, don't make the same mistake I did and buy the other releases, presuming that they're just as good as this song), and something I'd listen to of my own volition if it were a standalone release. But the real star of the show here, unsurprisingly, is Odz Manouk, who at this point seem to strike gold without even trying. It's worth going out of your way to track down a copy of this.