ZOS’s latest release is a whole-body alright: mangled, deformed, and bursting at the seams, overflowing like the flotsam of a shipwreck, and pulled to the extremities of genres from black metal to electro-improvisation. 

The miasmic symphony of guitar, bass, and drums, and below-the-belt grunts, is equal parts atonal and downbeat, literally forcing its sonic weight on our shoulders, like the title of the mid-cut of the album, “Black Albatross.” Each of the five compositions offers a new riff on doom and drone, where the shrieks of Aāos-Ra (guitarist, synth operator, and vocal progenitor) can be heard as they are slowly engulfed in the storm of drummer Ira Tympanum’s thumps. This Polish trio (with G.R.C. rounding out on bass) is accomplished not only in the dark arts of ruination, sonic and otherwise, but also in the subtleties of time and tempo. To listen, or, at moments, to merely hear against the blunt force trauma of guitars and calamitous beats, is to find oneself within a temporal horizon, literally caught in the teeth of the ZOS beast. “On the Announcer of Great Events” swallows all, as it fades into ethereal synth washes amidst the prolonged gasps that echo from a watery grave. By the time we arrive at the final piece, “Oh, Mighty Rehctaw!,” the efforts of this protracted struggle give way to a decidedly diluvian realm, where the hope of re-emergence is dispersed like so many bodies set adrift at sea, sinking, drowning, and finally letting go.

There is barely a moment of respite in the minutes of The Whole of the Body I call ZOS. The trio have managed to weave a creepy gossamer between ambient dread and a good smack to the skull, textures that prey on our ability to anticipate. ZOS is one step ahead of us. Just one. And that’s just enough to keep us guessing, unsure of what lies around the corner.