Black Tomb : " s/t "

The time of year has begun when I begin to look under every tombstone in search of the elusive metal albums I might have missed over the course of the year. This one I am not too far behind on. It is a rawer entry in the annuls of doom. The nasty spew of the vocals is very Graves at Sea, but the guitar melodies have a more doom in their intent and some times wander around in a more Sabbath like manner. They stay away from the graveyards, as more of a bulldozing pace is built up on "Eyes of Midnight". Though this song has a very similar rumble to the previous on with the drumming left as the main element to differentiate the two. This leaves a very small margin of difference.  "Swine" finds the band rearing up out of doom into a more grime ridden take on Eyehategod's brand of sludge.

After an interlude of feed back and samples "Draped In Flesh" is more deliberate and emotionally visceral. "Lust and Saturn" relies on it's riffs as the vocals are not doing anything new and the guitar solos , sounded better then first time we heard them jam out. So at this point into their album I am looking for something more dynamic. What they are doing is no bad it's just turning into a wall of overdrive fading into the background. There is a darker feel to "Turning Worm", but we are still lumbering over the same sonic ground. The album ends with the 13 minute "Church on the Hill". Up to this point the stakes had not been as high since expectations for the range of dynamics to be covered in the shorter songs was not as high. But when you bang out the same riff for thirteen minutes it gets a little redundant.

I'll give these guys a 6 as they have a good sound and i appreciate what they do. However I already own Graves at Seas albums and Eyehategod's albums, so there is not any space on my iPod for this brand of doom, which is more sludge than it is doom. If you are looking for more fuzz that goes up to 11, then this is another nugget for collection of loud.