Time Signature Edge of darkness...

Genre: eclectic doom / avant-garde / black metal

Heralded as one of New York's most innovative post-metal bands, Tombs are just about to release their third full-length album, Savage Gold, which is scheduled to be released on June 10. This is my first acquaintance with the band, so I have no point of reference, for comparison with their previous output.

While Tombs is considered a post-metal band generally, "Savage Gold" strikes me as being more in an avant-garde direction with black metal elements being particularly prominent - albeit a more melodic variant. Tracks like 'Portraits' and 'Seance', for instance, are full of blastbeats and tremolo-picking, as are 'Legacy', 'Spiral' and 'Ashes' (the latter also entering into grindcore territory) In the opening track 'Thanatos', Tombs combine doom metal and grindcore in a frantic session of droning notes accompanied by blastbeats, similarly to what the Australian cult band diSEMBOWELMENT were known for. Post-metal does rear its head in 'Echoes', but the song quickly turns into a combination of death doom and grindcore, while 'Deathtripper' and 'Severed Lives' explore Gothic rock, and 'Edge of Darkness' treats the listener to a thrash-meets-black attack.

The production is top notch, and the songwriting on this album is intriguing, with most tracks being dynamic in structure, seeming to explore different degrees of extremity.

A surprisingly extreme album, "Savage Gold" is an artistic success and its blend of doom, grind, and black metal in particular works extremely well. I can imagine that it will appeal to a variety of fans of extreme metal as well as avant-garde metal.