Band:	Odz Manouk
Album:	Bosoragazan (​Բ​ո​ս​ո​ր​ա​գ​ա​զ​ա​ն​)
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	July 2023

01. Mtnshagh
02. To Feast On Celestial Bodies
03. Arevordik
04. My Scepter Of Skull Bone
05. Morratsk
06. The Last Bastion Of The Serpent's Tongue
07. Requiem For A Kingdom That Never Was

Imagine suddenly coming back from a decade long pause with not one...

The cat is out of the bag. Odz Manouk has returned and more than made up for the absence with a double release day. Which, as exciting as it is as a listener, it is as daunting as a reviewer. Having to contextualize two very similar albums by the same band, especially now during summer festival season when "sitting down and reviewing" time is limited, can lead to some less than ideal results. So pardon the very brief reviews.

With these two new releases serving as a great opportunity to revisit and re-explore the Rhinocervs label / collective, something that also resulted in my 750th review, there's quite a back catalog to be explored, not just for Odz Manouk, whose 2010 solo record has definitely reached kvlt classic status, but also for the anonymously released stuff under the Rhinocervs name and from Yagian's labelmate A., which has been behind projects like Absum, Glossolalia, and Tukaaria , serving as a great extension to the very related and slightly more popular Black Twilight Circle. However the 2008-2013 run of the collective seems to have come to a very abrupt end, and in the meantime there has been very little heard from either of the people involved. Thus the 2023 revival comes as quite the surprise, even if the impact doesn't yet seem to have been as noticeable as I'd have expected / hoped.

Bosoragazan is the most straight-forward of the two new releases, though that is a pretty slim margin as both albums are pretty similar and still have that trademark sound. It's just that its sibling album, Tzurr goes a bit harder on the dissonant and intricate aspect, whereas Bosoragazan has an atmospheric focus that lets riffs sit for longer, but also gets to explore the eeriness in the atmospheres alongside the hypnotic repetitive guitars to create something really expansive. The slight production shift towards something a bit clearer is also more noticeable here as well, even if the band still works between very lo-fi parameters. A lot of it is using some familiar second-wave-ish black metal leaning on atmo black as a skeleton but adding some embeddings in regards to intricate guitar melodies and ambient elements on top of that. And it isn't until the closer where it feels like the band outgrows that skeleton to create something more unique sounding.



But if you want something more dissonant...