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January 09, 2006
O-Hum
I just got the brand-new O-Hum album, called Aloodeh. O-Hum are an Iranian rock band who have been very popular among the young Iranians for the past 5 years. They were not allowed to officially release their first album and their EP in Iran, so they "released" them by putting them online and letting people download the whole thing. As a result, there are many O-Hum albums going around, all of them home-burnt(!!). Now, Aloodeh is their first official release, and it is a good one for that.
It is an album of college-/pop-/hard-rock, with a good bit of Iranian-sims thrown in. Use of Iranian instruments (donbak, ney, etc.) is more pronounced, as is the case with Iranian rhythms re-created on guitar and synthesiser. The lyrics are of course from Hafez and Mowlana (Rumi), by now a standard O-Hum practice and a distinguishing feature of their music which I sadly hear they are planning to give up for the next album.
The first track (Darde Eshgh: Pain of Love) is a great openning, starting slowly and then pacing up to a fast, rock beat with great lyrics. The second one (Manbar: Podium) is also great, although it loses breath in the middle with a less than interesting guitar solo.
Like all good albums, there are tracks that you should skip (number three here!). They are either so great that the average intellect cannot grasp it, or they are just unfinished businesses. But they show how the artists were trying to work and sometimes reveal the whole intended spirit of the album (think Metallica's "Holier Than Thou" in the Black Album!), but musically "they do what a hoover does"!
The title track (#4) is a noble effort to have an industrial/Nine Inch Nails type song on this album, but the whole thing suffers from the fact that the members of the band are spread over three continents and the principal song-writer/singer/producer (Shahram Sharbaf) has been having a love-affair with his keyboard and its pre-programmed sounds! The result is "NIN meets Prodigy" which I am not sure if it is a good thing. It also has an obvious engineering and mastering problem which should have been easy to solve.
The rest of the album is a mix, too slow for my taste at times (I am a metal-head historian, thus, only two tracks of touchy, feely songs allowed in a 12 track album!), but that is a matter of personal preference. The music is great and the beats are interesting. Tracks six, seven, nine, and eleven are bound to be the best ones in the album, after track one of course.
The whole work suffers from several things, one of them I think is limited musicianship. I think more than one guitar should be used, and the solos should also be better thought of and presented. Nirvana-style vocal line solos are fun, and they were nice in Darvish (which I still think is the best O-Hum track), but in the long run, other than nice riffs, you need convincing solos.
As a whole, I think this is a great album. I listened to it twice, once as an Iranian who understands the lyrics and is trying to figure them out from among the non-Iranian beats and unusual singing, and once as a non-Iranian who does not understand the lyrics and just cares about the music. Both times, O-Hum comes out good, artistic, and entertaining. All in all, I will give this album four out of five stars and encourage everyone to go to CD Baby and buy a copy of it. It is a breath of fresh air in the bland music of today!
Posted by Khodadad at January 9, 2006 07:30 PM
Comments
I listened to the two minute clips at CD Baby, in the "non-Iranian" format only. ;) I enjoyed the music in the background as I surfed for a while. Some of their instrumentals reminded be a bit of Pinkfloyd. An interesting experience!
Posted by: David at January 12, 2006 01:34 AM