Sunday 26 July 2015

Open Tomb - Dead Weight LP


Tracklist:-

1. Blood And Flies
2. Abandoned In A Pit
3. Scraping Shit (From Beneath My Nails)

I am so behind with recent doom happenings. What better way to banish the holiday highs and usher in the real-world lows than grabbing last year's LP from Hamilton (NZ) doom doom/sludge miscreants Open Tomb. Having already reviewed their earlier Dry Cough Records tape release of "Servants Of Slow", I knew a bit of what I was letting myself in for but when I set eyes on that gloriously twisted cover art, Dead Weight was not going to be just another doom release. Dead Weight was released in August by Dry Cough Records.

Without warning, Open Tomb head straight for the throat at the start of Blood And Flies. Those initial gargled screams and bass thuds are as harrowing as they are loud. Open Tomb has never been a band that settles for straightforward groove and standard time-signatures and here, they perform at a crawl tempo-wise. Vocals are few and far between early on with the band focusing on minimal instrumentation and samples. It doesn’t take long for you to feel as though you’re being dragged to the murky depths of the sea with weights tied around your neck. Open Tomb certainly knows a thing or two about apt song-titles. Abandoned In A Pit feels as lonely as you’d feel in the same situation. Sometimes the atmosphere on Dead Weight is more akin to that of a noise release and brings to mind acts like Colossloth (UK) and Idre (US), but they do hail from the same country and Meth Drinker and later in the song you are reminded of that as the shrieks comes into the view. Closing monster Scraping Shit (From Beneath My Nails) accentuates the torture that you’ve already been put through with it’s barren riffs and haunting choral samples. There’s nothing in the way of melody or light on Dead Weight and that's the way Open Tomb always planned it. It’s hard to write enough to do this record justice as it’s one that you should really listen to properly, especially if you are a true sludge/doom fan. It’s housed on a slab of clear wax with red splatter, which looks lovely when held up to natural light. Quite fitting really!

Stream Dead Weight in full here:-



You can purchase a digital download directly from Open Tomb above and you may even be able to pick up physical LP's from then, if you live in New Zealand (if they have any left).

Alternatively, if you can grab a copy from Dry Cough Records here - http://drycoughrecords.bigcartel.com

Open Tomb Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Open-Tomb
Dry Cough Records Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/DryCoughRecords

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