If you read my review of the Dead And Dripping album recently then you’ve come to the right place for more gutturally effective death metal as this act also hails from the USA. As a three piece all the band members reside Conjureth as well and if you’ve not heard that bands latest album ‘The Parasitic Chambers’ then you really should, after listening to this one by Tumulation. There are comparisons to Conjureth that can be made but Tumulation, though the band members have switched instruments for this project, is an altogether different beast offering a much grislier style with a production residing in the bowels of hell. Four of the tracks were released on the band’s demo ‘Savage Blood Domain’ released in January of this year and have been added to the end of this full length in the same order with no difference in sound I could detect.

Opening with an intro is nothing new in death metal but instead of some eerie windswept soundscape the trio has adopted doom-death soundscape, with a dense oppressiveness that flows into the album’s full opening tune ‘Shattered Under The Eclipse’. Fans of the horror stricken doom-death or death-doom scenes (yep there is a difference to me) can look forward to inherent grotesquery surrounding resolute sonic malformations of epic construction. The pacing is firmly entrenched in doom metal but when the band step on the gas the churning momentum is excellent as ‘Shattered…’ proves about half way in.

Fans of acts such as Blood Incantation and Hooded Menace will be in their element and if you still crave the cloying doom-death of very early Paradise Lost then look no further, your wish has been granted with Tumulation. The total doom of ‘Astral Sickness’ is devastating, a sickening assault that possesses a funereal ferocity embedded with a pulverising stature that seems to wrap itself around constricting and crushing the life from you. As the double kick juts in the song takes on a whole new level of inhumanity, its dense cloying sound is balanced by tempo deviations.

Continuing the bludgeoning affront is ‘Rorschach’, a track beginning with a sample that my friend says is potentially from one 1970s films in the Vampire Trilogy, but I may be wrong. After the intro section the song drops in bone grinding riffage with an asphyxiating terror surrounding it as it shifts to groove like deathliness bolstered by periodic blast work outs. ‘Sterilizing Winds’ also has an intro sample which sounds like it’s from the same films as the previous one. This is the first song that appeared on the band’s demo and like I stated previously is no different in sound to the four tracks preceding it as the abrupt metal insertion after the intro section offers more rancid filth driven deathliness but with a density that seems to be ramped up substantially. The mid-tempo pacing provides an abundance of momentum before it plunges into abyssal sludge speed alongside the deep cavernous vocal onslaught.

Similar doom pacing is heard on ‘Rites Of Forgotten Misery’ as the horror vocals continue plummeting the tune into a slower soundscape that offers some respite with a catchy riff break a couple of minutes in. The slow strangulation of the listener is felt throughout as the monstrous epic ‘Bound To The Rakhasha’ also has a film sample to start it. The occult like starting phase sets the scene for the pervading doom-death that follows. Again the density has huge impact, the dread filled toning, and its unnerving foreboding mood allows the track to build up in tension towards a brutal groove segment that is very catchy, but, it is colossal doom like passages that make Tumulation the beast it is as half way in the track has a riff that dissolves your soul with multifarious malevolence. After the ordeal you have endured ‘Abject Maelstrom Specters’ offers some well-earned respite, an ambient creepy outro piece spanning nearly three minutes, it listens like an aftermath to the horrors you have witnessed with sorrowful toning, yet still saturated in dread.

A truly horrifying album, packed with emotive terror the album’s intrinsic foul loathing is palpable, a nightmarish ordeal that has to be heard to be believed.

(8.5/10 Martin Harris)

https://www.facebook.com/tumulation

https://hammerheart.bandcamp.com/album/haunted-funeral-creations