Tómarúm - Beyond Obsidian Euphoria

Label - Prosthetic Records

Release Date - 4th of April 2025

Words - Tony Bliss

With the lines so definitively blurred between metal subgenres nowadays, there’s a healthy batch of bands that legitimately defy description. Atlanta natives Tomarum sit at the top of this ever-growing pile. ‘Epic’ and ‘progressive’ might not cut the mustard in defining what the band do by a long stretch, however, the five piece casted such a wide net on their astonishing debut album Ash In Realms of Stone Icons, that slapping a clearer cut label on their sound seems almost insulting. Let's just say this - Tomarum are the most exciting musicians to grab the extreme metal baton in recent memory.

There is much that sets Beyond Obsidian Europhia apart from the band's contemporaries, however as with Ash In Realms…it is the sheer ferocity with which Tomarum delivers these songs that strikes you first. ‘In Search Of The Triumph Beyond…(Obsidian Overture)’ is a scandalously indulgent opener, the sort of mountainous stockpile of melodic ideas and ornate blasting that rockets by in what seems like half its ten-minute run time, and feels so thrilling and exhausting it is easy to forget that this is just the beginning.

‘Shallow Ecstasy’ is another relentless display of power, albeit with the finer details making all the difference, whether it's the exhilarating lead breaks or a swords-aloft chorus that lifts the song into a new realm of soul-barring angst. ‘Shed This Erroneous Skin’ and ‘Blood Mirage’ meanwhile settle into full tech-death mode, the former calling to mind the peak-form riffing finesse of Obscura or Ne Obliviscaris, whereas the later opens a portal to the genres dissonant netherworld, an ultra-angular and surreal four minutes that vanishes spiralling into the void.

From here, things only get more ambitious. ‘Halcyon Memory: Dreamscapes Across The Blue’ swiftly wanders down a prog-rock rabbit hole, a thing of melancholic beauty driven by bubbling sequencers, clean guitars and orchestral strings before a frankly astonishing guitar solo erupts from the ether. ‘Silver, Ashen Tears’ is a flat-out labyrinth of riffs, those uber-precise, razor-keen chops and breakneck tempos again flaunting the band's tech-death credentials, but with plenty of Opeth-ian melodic respites throughout the plus ten-minute journey.

Closing track proper ‘The Final Pursuit Of Light’ brings everything together into one gluttonous whole, its numerous clean sections and guttural roars again conveying a strong My Arms, Your Hearse influence, the band sounding twice as destructive and muscular as they have yet - moments of acoustic serenity and delicate atmospherics notwithstanding.  

As ‘Becoming The Stone Icon (Obsidian Reprise)’ rounds the record off with a brief and final burst of grandiloquent fury, we are left in little doubt - Beyond Obsidian Euphoria is a progressive metal classic in waiting. With such a self-evident command of mood, diversity and ripping extreme metal dynamics, we already know Tomarum have got it all, and in bucket loads. Where they go next is anyone's guess, and a spine-tingling thought.

9/10