I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; how does such a tiny population as is spread throughout Norway manage to produce so many great metal and rock bands? Whilst this, at the moment, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’s mainstream population seems obsessed with whatever junk is churned out by reality TV that will be spread far and wide on tinny phone speakers cranked up to their irritating maximum on public transport, Norway with a population of considerably less then the average viewing figures of X Factor keeps on developing quality metal. Don’t get me wrong, there are a hell of a lot of good established and new British metal bands that play in the alcohol and sweat soaked clubs I tend to seek out for my live music fixes, but in terms of bands per head of population, Scandinavia seems to be so far ahead. Righto, rant over, and onto ‘Red Skies and Dead Eyes’, the 3rd full length release of Norwegian Doomsters Tombstones, and their second on Soulseller Records.
I’d be a liar if I said I’d heard the band’s previous releases before getting sent this, their third LP; short of a lottery win and early retirement I could never hear all the music I would want to. As such, with nothing more than the knowledge that they had Bloody Hammers as label mates, and tagged themselves “Norwegian Doom”, I approached the music afresh. With a running time of 44 minutes, a scant six tracks fill this album, the shortest being barely under six and a half minutes, namely the opener ‘Black Moon’; with a title and running time like that, how could this be anything but classic doom? With an opening of howling winds, ‘Black Moon’ establishes the pace of album, the riff like the drag of a dying man’s footsteps slogging through a snow buried Norwegian wood, the guitar ably matched by a fuzzy bass and perfectly complimentary drum beat, the vocals suitably far back in the mix. ‘King of Daze’ follows with an initially more urgent beat, as if that same dying man in the snow has had a sudden, and short lived burst of adrenalin, managing to run for a few desperate seconds before the gloom again drags him down.
Whilst utterly devoid of any urgency, it is on the truly epic ‘Obstfelder’, a just shy of ten minute lesson in all things doom, that Tombstones really hit their mark. The slow progression allows each instrument to explore, a wall of churning, hypnotic, almost primal riffs pulsing from the speakers, with the slow, dark and inexorable advance of a Lovecraftian deity. When they finally arrive, the tormented vocals only add to the despairing tone of the track which ends with the howling gale the band opened the album with, the same Wendigo continuing its wind torn journey through into ‘The Other Eye’. Title track, ‘Red Skies and Dead Eyes’ ups the pace slightly with a harder riff and groovier bass, but keeps the same stripped back sound that prevails throughout the album. I know the publicity provided by the label made good mention of the engineering and producing presence of knob turning guru Billy Anderson (go look him up folks, he has an unrivalled resume in the world of doom), but to my ears, his main contribution is in sounding like he wasn’t there, simply allowing the three piece to explore their sonic environment with confidence.
Whilst I dislike comparing band to band, and prefer categorising music into just two kinds, what I like and what I don’t, for the purposes of those who have not heard Tombstones, the most obvious comparison is Electric Wizard; if you revel in the sound of those Dorset legends, this Norwegian trio is right up your street. Hell, I’ll even dare to go so far as to say, if he doesn’t want to be eclipsed, Jus Osborn had better get his game face on for his next release. October sees Tombstones playing Europe with four UK shows; if they can reproduce this same sound live, they’ll be a band worth seeing.
(8.5/10 – Spenny)
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