Post-Metal leaders Tombs have signed a new world-wide deal with Metal Blade Records and are presently recording a new full-length album due in 2017 Tombs posted to their social networks after the announcement:
“It’s been a bit, but we have much to report
It’s an honor to announce we’ve signed a worldwide deal with the legendary Metal Blade Records We’ll be recording a new album in the coming months for a release in 2017; more details to come! A huge thank you to everyone at Relapse Records for every thing over the years”
Mike Hill of Tombs further commented:
“Metal Blade is a legendary label that has put out legendary records by legendary bands It’s an honor to be part of the organization”
Tombs is heading out on the road to continue to support their All Empires Fall EP with their new lineup Wolvhammer will open the dates Fans can now visit the bands new official YouTube page, where director’s cut and behind-the-scenes videos for the album track, ‘V’, can be viewed: youtubecom/tombscult
Karyn Crisis’ Gospel Of The Witches is streaming “The Alchemist”, off their forthcoming debut album Salem’s Wounds, out March 9, 2015 in Europe and March 24, 2015 in North America via Century Media Records, here and here.
Salem’s Wounds contains 13 tracks recorded by Karyn together with Davide Tiso (Ephel Duath), Ross Dolan (Immolation), Mike Hill (Tombs) and Charlie Schmid (Vaura).
Salem’s Wounds was financed by fans via websites like Indiegogo/Etsy and was recorded at The Basement Recordings in North Carolina with producer Jamie King (Between the Buried and Me, The Contortionist. The album cover was painted by Karyn herself, who (in addition to her vocal talents) is a respected painter and leatherworker. See below for the complete album track-listing.
Salem’s Wounds track-listing:
1. Omphalos
2. The Alchemist
3. Ancient Ways
4. Aradia
5. Mother
6. Father
7. Goddess Of Light
8. Howl At The Moon
9. Pillars
10. The Secret
11. Salem’s Wounds
12. The Sword And The Stone
13. The Ascent
KARYN CRISIS’ GOSPEL OF THE WITCHES live 2015
Mar 28: Trick Shot Billiards and Music Hall – Clifton Park, NY
Mar 29: Saint Vitus – Brooklyn, NY
“The first one that immediately comes to mind is that I saw Neurosis , EyeHateGod, and Dead and Gone. I’m gonna say it was the late 90s. EyeHateGod, even though I don’t think they have held up as well over the years; but in that period, they were one of the greatest live bands of all time. They are certainly one of the best live bands ever. And I had forgotten that Neurosis was on the bill, and Neurosis came out and even topped EyeHateGod, they were that good. This was on the tail end of the Through Silver In Blood (Neurot) touring, and it was just a transcendent experience to see them live.”
Karyn Crisis’ Gospel Of The Witches is streaming “Mother”, off her forthcoming album Salem’s Wounds, out March 9, 2015 in Europe and March 10, 2015 in North America via Century Media Records, here and here.
Salem’s Wounds contains 13 tracks recorded by Karyn together with Davide Tiso (EPHEL DUATH), Ross Dolan (IMMOLATION), Mike Hill (TOMBS) and Charlie Schmid (VAURA).
Salem’s Wounds was financed by fans via websites like Indiegogo/Etsy and was recorded at The Basement Recordings in North Carolina with producer Jamie King (BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME, THE CONTORTIONIST). The album cover was painted by Karyn herself, who (in addition to her vocal talents) is a respected painter and leatherworker. See below for the complete album track-listing.
Salem’s Wounds track-listing:
1. Omphalos
2. The Alchemist
3. Ancient Ways
4. Aradia
5. Mother
6. Father
7. Goddess Of Light
8. Howl At The Moon
9. Pillars
10. The Secret
11. Salem’s Wounds
12. The Sword And The Stone
13. The Ascent
Stay tuned for more news about KARYN CRISIS’ GOSPEL OF THE WITCHES coming soon!
…And so we continue with our countdown of the Official Ghost Cult Top 50 Metal releases of 2014 by bringing you Albums 15 to 11. As we get closer the top, the sheer unadulterated quality of the albums covered is astounding, and every one of our Top 20 should proudly sit in your collection already. And if it doesn’t, you should get investigating immediately…
15. GODFLESH – A World Lit Only By Fire (Avalanche)
Joining the growing list of bands who have returned from a leave of recording absence in style, Justin Broadrick resumes where he left off thirteen years ago, delivering dissonant, nihilistic, industrial cold post-metal. Innovators and leaders to a previous generation of bands, Godflesh returns with metallic precision and destructive poundings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PqXB-u4j04
“The crushing landscapes of Streetcleaner (Earache) are recalled in the merciless dehumanised beats yet the harshness of the eight string guitar has taken this unforgiving creation an even blacker more disturbing feel. The momentum never lags throughout this fearsome monolith feeling urgent and vital throughout. It may be their first full length in thirteen years but every fibre of the bands DNA has mutated into an even more virulent strain of post-Sabbath paranoia whose icy claws cannot be escaped.”
Extreme doom has never been in a healthier or more prolific state, and is a scene with a surfeit of reeking repugnancy spread over a growing horde of performers. Oozing themselves to the very peak of the sludge mountain is Chicago’s Indian, with a release that tests the very limits of just how hideous a piece of music can be and still be appreciated. Essential art, manifested as abhorrent compositions.
“Over the course of 39 harrowing minutes, Indian attempt to batter the listener into submission with a ceaseless barrage of spiky sludge riffs that aren’t afraid to repeat themselves to make their point well and truly felt, percussion that hits as hard as a drunken preacher taking his belt to a cowering sinner, horrible harsh droning noises that sound like a possessed radio broadcasting live from Chernobyl, and all topped off with Will Lindsay’s throat-shredding howls and screeches.”
On Heritage, Mikael Åkerfeldt led his Swedes away from a technical Death Metal past towards the Prog Rock light. With Pale Communion, transition completed, he perfects the marriage of Opeth and their new slant, constructing a beautiful, reflective, warm and overwhelmingly natural album that speaks in an altered, more progressively refined tongue to the previous voices of Opeth.
“Fast forward three years and Pale Communion is, in many ways a continuation of such a direction, but one that see’s Mikael’s uncompromising view drawing more clearly into focus. Harking back again to the late 60s and early 70s this eleventh studio opus features fluid dexterous drum patterns, moody distorted organ work and another all clean and highly proficient performance in the vocal department. Where Heritage felt somewhat disjointed on occasion Pale Communion is richly woven into a tapestry of ornate and complex elements rather than flitting from one genre to the next.”
Like one of their own dark, weighty epics, Yob’s career is slowly unfurling, opening out as expansive riffs draw out of the dark, and slab-heavy tones meld Post and Doom Metal. Yob’s previous two albums, in particular, have been preparation for this career defining opus, where the permutations of delicate beauty and unsubtle heavyweight guitars are woven skilfully.
“Clearing the Path to Ascend begins by showing a return to the inventive aspects of …Cessation with a gently repetitive chords, and mellifluous tones riding a colossal riffs that move with the speed of a tortoise. All four tracks far exceed the ten-minute mark yet none here exceed their welcome. Combining the best aspects of the band’s aforementioned last albums this is a perfect blend of weight, hostility, melody and ecstasy, and will need many plays to yield its full array of splendour.”
While predecessor Path of Totality (fortunately not a dub-step album, like Korn’s of the same name)) was a great album in its own right, it is in 2014 that songwriter Mike Hill, backed by a crystalline production by Erik Rutan, has finalised the blueprint of how to merge granite flecked post-Metal with rusted Black Metal, bathing us all in cold, exacting, current, intelligent and hostile extreme music, where the caustic overwhelms.
“Savage Gold, the third album from Brooklyn quartet Tombs, is certainly no easy listen. Since their debut release Winter Hours in 2009, the band have attempted to show just how black and post-metal should go together and once again stand head and shoulders above the competition, for Savage Gold is a triumph in visceral aggression and brooding atmospherics.”
Karyn Crisis’ Gospel of the Witches has signed with Century Media Records and will be issuing a new record in 2015. The forthcoming album was financed via Kickstarter and Etsy, and collaborated with Davide Tiso, Ross Dolan (Immolation), Mike Hill (Tombs) and Charlie Schmid (Vaura) recording 13 songs at the Basement Recordings in North Carolina with producer Jamie King (Between the Buried and me, The Contortionist).
Crisis commented on the record:
“This band began 5 years ago in Tuscany, Italy, as an alchemical journey between Davide Tiso (EPHEL DUATH) and myself as we searched for a way to musically honor the Witches who came before me and who have been guiding me in Spirit, teaching me their Ancient Ways.”
One of the leading bands of heavy music today, Tombs, released what is surely to be one of the top album releases this year when Savage Gold dropped from Relapse in June. We certainly hyped the album ourselves before we ever heard a note, including it as #1 in our “Top Albums To Watch” list for this year in January. Now at Ghost Cult we interview a ton of artists, since we find this is the way to uncover the most insights about bands that fans want to know about. Tombs front man Mike Hill is a guy we have chatted with many times, so there was familiarity there that we don’t always get to have with others. His speaking voice has a certain authority to it, not unlike you imagine a judge or an college professor has. Always generous with is time, we covered a lot of ground. At the same time Mike is a no-nonsense type of guy who takes his art very seriously, and we afforded him the consideration and respect he deserves.
Listening to Savage Gold the first thing that jumps out at you is the power, clarity and immediacy of the music. We started our chat by asking Mike about the sonic changes from the last few albums and what spurred the move in this direction:
“With the last couple of records there was a lot of atmosphere. We relied more on a lot of effects and reverb, sort of far away sounds. And I feel on a lot of the recordings especially, there was a lot of the details in the recording was lost. For instance some of the drum performances are almost inaudible because of the spacial effects and the atmosphere, things like that. So one of the things I wanted to achieve with this record, was to bring those details that were lost on the last records, like the technical playing.. all these little subtleties and bring them to the forefront. The way we achieved that was to go more minimal, and to scale back the effects. So we allowed just the performances of the songs convey the power, nothing else. In order to achieve that we wanted to clean up our sound to highlight those things. That was what our approach on the production side of things. That was exactly what we were hoping to achieve.”
We found the choice of Eric Rutan, know for his pristine death metal production work to be an inspired choice:
I think John Congeleton who produced the last album, he had a pretty big hand and definitely brought a lot to the table for that record; helping to sculpt the sound and producing a very moody album. On the new album, with this kind of production, we really wanted an articulation and a detail orientated sound.”
“Rutan is a guy I have admired for many, many years. I have been a fan of every band Eric has worked in, starting with Ripping Corpse, then his work with Morbid Angel, and all his stuff with Hate Eternal. They are all great bands. And I am a real fan of his production work, most notably his work on the Goatwhore records. The production of those particular records really piqued my interest in working with him. You can hear everything, and all of the the details are there. They are very brutal records, but very clear. That’s what gave us, sort of the idea, to move on with him. I think the combination of us working with him is a really great team. And I’m looking forward to working with this team more in the future.”
Tombs often has wide-ranging concept albums and we wondered if Savage Gold was any different. Also, we got a sense from repeated listens that this album was much more personal for the band. Hill explained:
“It’s not a concept record the way Rush- 2112 is a concept record (laughs), but yes, it is a concept record. The songs are always related because the material was written over a period of time that was everyone’s life. We were all living together during the period of time of making this album, so all those things going on with us were the themes that made it on to the record. And there was a lot of death and dying of friends and family going on around us, a lot of people in our camp. It was never our intention to write about it particularly. But that kind of environment inspired the lyrical content on the record. And you just find yourself thinking about things differently, when people pass away. This record in general is definitely a mediation on death and beyond and infinity. The lifespan of people. We looked at this borderland between life and death, and explored that idea.”
“That’s right, it’s definitely fair to say that (it’s more personal) since all of us having experienced losses these last couple of years.”
Where previous efforts by the band beat up your ears sonically only to stem the tide occasionally, the new album has a a sequence and a track flow that highlights the dynamic changes between songs.
“It’s just a natural exploration of the things we are interested in. I’m really into playing fast and brutal, but at the same time I am really into giving things space, and subtlety and expressing myself in other ways. Maybe on the next few records, I might want to explore even more with dynamics. And I would love to have more of that in the future, more things that are there to polarize to people even more. It’s all really just different sides of the same coin.”
Savage Gold is the first album with Garrett Bussanick and Ben Brand in the band. We weren’t sure how much the guys contributed to creating the new music, based on the timeline of when they joined.
“Oh absolutely, they did contribute quite a bit. The main ideas: the riffs and song structures are all stuff I wrote and always come from me. Andrew (Hernandez II) helps refine them.”
“Let’s take a look at each guy. We’ll start with Ben first: Ben’s bass playing style is a real departure in style to what we’ve had in the band in the past. Carson (James) was a really awesome, solid, tone-orientated straight ahead player and Ben is more busy. His position in the rhythm section definitely helped the band improve dynamically. And Garrett’s parts and solos definitely added a lot to to the atmosphere of the songs. All of his parts and overdubs added a lot to the sound. That is how each guy contributes to the dynamic flow in the band and on this album.”
We also asked Mike about his vocal contributions to the much talked about debut solo album from Karyn Crisis, The Gospel of The Witches:
“It’s great! Crisis was a legendary band here in New York. I really enjoyed their music and I thought they were very unique, especially during the time period when they existed in this city. I always admired Karyn’s artwork, but I never really got to know her until this project. The forces of the universe just aligned and allowed us to work together on this music. It’s been a real honor working with Davide (Tiso) and Karyn. Everything I have heard is great! So far I have only done backing vocals on two songs, but I am really looking forward to hearing the finished project when it’s all mixed and mastered and finished.”
Chicago instrumental post-rockers Pelican have been known for putting on quite the powerful show despite the lack of vocals. While this is a minor setback for those unfamiliar with the band, Pelican’s sound is quite heavy enough for those who love their music this way and tonight’s show was no exception.
Bassist Bryan Herweg was positioned in center with guitarist Trevor de Brauw and their “newest” member Dallas Thomas working together and creating a vibe that comes across heavy yet atmospheric. The visuals playing in the backdrop works well with the low lighting and creates a somewhat somber atmosphere that got the crowd into it immediately.
Almost half of their ten song set covered their latest release Forever Becoming, such as ‘The Tundra’ and ‘Deny The Absolute’, while sprinkling songs from various releases such as ‘Dead Between the Walls’ and ‘Ephemeral’. Their set list flowed fairly smoothly and unlike past tours, Pelican weaved it together fairly well and gave the crowd an earful of heavy sounds.
The encore of ‘Mammoth’ was their heaviest tune of the evening, getting a mosh pit going and raising the tempo for the night. While many may not expect such things happening at a Pelican show, they do throw in surprises.
Brooklyn, New York’s Tombs is a bit of the opposite of what post-rock fans may expect and instead leaned towards crushing riffs and a tinge of black metal meets experimental heaviness. Rarely letting up on low end heaviness, Tombs kept the crowd on its feet with its vicious heaviness and rarely letting up. Neurot Recordings artist Mustard Gas And Roses a.k.a. MGR a.k.a.Mike Gallagher (ex-ISIS) opened the night.
Dealing with themes as diverse as suicide and alchemy, Savage Gold (Relapse Records) the third album from Brooklyn quartet Tombs is certainly no easy listen. Since their debut release Winter Hours in 2009, the band have attempted to show just how black and post-metal should go together and in a sea of second rate poseurs have once again stood head and shoulders above the competition, for Savage Gold is a triumph in visceral aggression and brooding atmospherics.
Aided by death metal maestro Erik Rutan’s cast-iron production job, the ten songs on display here are reminiscent of sturdy cables pulsing with a malign electric current. The riffs are taut, poised and prone to cause a severe shock to anyone of an unwary persuasion getting too close. Beginning with the lethal tremolo picking of ‘Thanatos’, which could skin an elephant at 50 paces, the intensity barely lets up until the sparse, post-apocalyptic vibes of ‘Severed Lives’ which chills with its images of a ruined, burning earth. If that wasn’t creepy enough however, the futility of suicide is explored via the dour spoken word, clanking bass and dissonant melodies of ‘Deathtripper’, one of the bleakest songs you will ever experience.
There are a few surprises on offer however as the clinical, racing thrash workout of ‘Edge of Darkness’ demonstrates, although the otherworldly, swirling melodies soon take things back into the realm of the weird with the twisted, atonal mess and brutal percussive assault of closing track ‘Spiral’ summing up the harrowing journey we have just experienced.
While undoubtedly the vehicle of guitarist/vocalist Mike Hill, a true dark visionary, the other members excel themselves throughout, ensuring Tombs sound like consummate professionals united by a common aim; to drag you down into the darkness and leave you begging for more.
![12 Jacket (Gatefold - Two Pocket) [GD30OB2-N]](https://i0.wp.com/ghostcultmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Tombs-savage-gold-album-cover.jpg?ssl=1)