Wombbath – Tales of Madness
Release Date: 18th December 2020
Label: Transcending Obscurity Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal
FFO: Entombed, Morbid Angel, Tomb Mold.
Review By: Ken Love
I recently posted a note on Twitter that proclaiming that, as I’ve gotten older, my music taste has gotten more extreme. Many people believe that extreme metal is the bastion of angsty youth; young spite-filled teenagers angry at their parents, teachers, religion, politics and the world. For me? As a middle-age, new parent laden with the pressures of real life – career, family, finances, work-life balance, hobbies – it all makes the more extreme end of music a perfect outlet for the release of that pressure. As a teenage metal fan, I could not vibe or connect with death or black metal, it was devoid of many of the characteristics I loved in metal; no catchy vocals, rarely any melody, and certainly no decipherable lyrics through the quagmire of musical filth. I now understand it’s precisely those traits that make it so exciting and interesting. I listen with wonder at the scope and sonic diversity that exists within the metal underground that only a trained listener can enjoy. Some of the most creative & innovative artists in our world have originated from here precisely because there is such a fierce repulsion to convention. The rules simply don’t matter. Gojira and Behemoth are two examples of our most powerful bands whose individual sounds were forged in the deep recesses of the underground before infiltrating mainstream consciousness. In 2020, bands like Ulcerate, Anaal Naathrakh, Oranssi Pazuzu or Imperial Triumphant are examples of fiercely unique and utterly vital bands who have presented masterful & weighty extreme tomes demonstrating this ingenuity in spades.
This brings me on to the new(ish) album by Swedish death metallers, Wombbath. I’ll be honest, Wombbath are a band I was familiar with however when I saw ‘Lavatory Suicide Remains’ and ‘Save Your Last Breath to Scream’ as track titles, I was in. I also knew what to expect. I’m not expecting anything as creative and avant-garde as Imperial Triumphant’s mind-bending jazz jigsaw or the unnerving post-black metal soundscapes of Oranssi Pazuzu; this is raw & unbridled, piss ‘n vinegar Swedish death metal. From the moment ‘Tales From The Dark Side’ comes veering up the left hand path it’s a pretty solid indicator of what to expect. Classic 90s death metal is the name of the game here, if that floats your boat you’re going to have a rollicking good time. Entombed, Obituary, Morbid Angel, blazing tremolo riffs, thunderous double bass, guttural growls – it’s all here and executed with clinical efficacy. Brutal Mights is a perfect example of what they do well; energetic galloping rhythms stop and start keeping your head consistently rattling while switches in pace help to provide colour & diversity. Yet, over the course of the album, it does blur together into a muddy death metal porridge as their formula is repeated over and over. This criticism is perhaps symptomatic of the album being less a single body of work, and instead a collection of re-recordings of disparate songs from across the bands’ history. This is its real shortcoming.
Make no mistake, this is a very good collection of songs and given most of the source material is 30 years old it all holds up exceptionally well. The songs individually are great however, collectively, as an album, it just doesn’t vary enough to maintain attention.
Here Wombbath deliver an album that will cut you deep but doesn’t quite sever the artery.
(3 / 5)
