Even the name of 71Tonman’s hometown of Wrolclaw, Poland, seems like an apt, ne prescient slice of nominative determinism, being as the band’s raison d’etre is an ominous, slow and brutally dense wedge of sludge metal. Comprising just four tracks, this their third full length effort is as dark and suffocating as their previous efforts, but the sound is more mature, rounded and dare I say it, slightly more adventurous in scope, musicality and production. I’m not quite sure but I would hazard a guess that the last few albums I have been drawn too, have been paddling about in the wretched soup of sludge and doom, which seems to sum up what this time of year can do for you mentally as the winter seems intent on digging her talons into you muffin tops and clinging on for dear life, as the cold, grey mornings stretch out like a ribbon of freshly laid chewing gum stretching from the bottom of your box fresh trainers to your fingertip. I’m not saying that there’s no hope, but my mood is about as dense as a Brexit voting middle class Tory.
Anyway, back to the music, and whilst I have done my best at laying the groundwork for a moody, depressing segue into mental health being comparable to certain genres of music, I’ll stop myself before I get carried away and be a little more constructive in my critique. The issue within this genre of music is that it can be a little introverted, self-absorbed and one paced. Certainly, when you look at the running times of these four songs here, you can only imagine, that things will start slowly and end at a crawl and yes, there are moments during this album that precipitate a slight eye rolling sigh, as the riffs collapse around you like a munitions dump on fire. It’s more at the funeral/sludge end of the genre, dwelling in the same dank dungeon as say Primitive Man and as such, things take their time to develop, gestate, masticating themselves into a sticky paste before stomping their way into their local for a shot of some foul home brewed gin.
But given the relatively brief running time, the repetitive brown noise doesn’t ever completely outstay it’s welcome and amongst the gun mental greyness of it all, come little stabs of tempo changes that are as welcome as a cuddle on the day of your parents’ funeral. No more so than on ‘Conquest’ which despite its best efforts to compress your spine with it’s gargantuan riffs and pummelling repetitive drum loops, suddenly injects a half time tempo change, that spins on it’s own axis off the back of percussive double bass drums and suddenly, a meadow that was full of dead bodies and pulsating pools of putrid offal, suddenly bloom into flower as the clouds part and the sun crisps the back of your neck. But no sooner have started to nod your head, it all crawls back into itself, and we’re back into the oppressive maelstrom of melancholy and sledgehammer guitars all corralled with some beautiful guttural roars courtesy of vocalist KK.
Look, this isn’t necessarily reinventing the wheel from a genre or musicality perspective, but what it does do, is to command your attention (for the most part) of it’s brief running time. It begs, borrows and steals for the great and the good from within this genre and if that sounds like I am damming them with faint praise, I’m not because whilst this might not be the most original thing I have heard coming from this particular genre recently, it has enough about it, that you’d want 71Tonman to have your back during a dalliance on the cobbles with some ne’er-do-wells at three o’clock in the morning in Bermondsey. It has enough about it, enough little flashes of cleverness in tempo changes and tonal touches such as the buzzing guitars that lay a red carpet to the middle eight of War that recalls early Entombed on Temazepam. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but if you give it your full attention, there is much to enjoy within ‘Of End Times’s at times gruelling yet ultimately rewarding run time.
(7/10 Nick Griffiths)
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