Wombbath - Beyond The Abyss

Wombbath – Beyond The Abyss
Release Date: 14th March 2025
Label: Pulverised Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Swedish Death Metal
FFO: Entombed, Convulse, Coercion.
Review By: Mark Young

With this release, I’ve added Wombbath to the list of bands who have never appeared on my radar and as such I had no expectation of what Beyond The Abyss would be like, which is surprising given that they have been around since the early 90s. No matter, as it is what they sound like now is our interest for today. On the whole, this is a solid piece of death metal with some incredible high points, and it’s played with conviction, but it didn’t grab me right the way through. It sounds great, heavy in all the right places as you might expect but felt that there was something missing from certain songs when held against others here.

Following the Intro, we lurch into Words Unspoken, which is all muscular riffing and jarring guitar lines replete with guttural vocals which are a given in this genre. It runs at a steady pace and the production on it is spot-on, especially with a decent set of headphones. It’s frenzied enough and does all the right things, but as I said, didn’t grab me. Furthermore, it’s entirely likely that I have consumed too much death metal over the last 6 months or so (is that possible?) and that I could be jaded, but given that A Symphony Of Dread continues down a similar path, albeit with more of a crushing swagger, so I don’t think it’s me. That is not to say the songs are bad, far from it because they aren’t and there are moments of excellence on here, such as the discordant lines on display on Discord Of Doom. This is a crushing affair, tight, blackened riffing that lives up to their description of this album as being ‘dark and filthy’ which it most certainly is. This one has a different quality to it, as does the title track, which feels as though they put it into high gear. The pair are more focused, aggressive, and are more interesting as a result. The way that the arrangement is pulled together to include symphonic elements to widen the sonic field just before they melt your face with a cracking lead break is top class.

It is a shame that they follow this with Malevolent which feels pedestrian by comparison with its slower, methodical pace, but they do make up for it with the blasting Faces of Tragedy, which has a similar pace but has something about it in how it picks and chooses its tempo all under a massive groove. When they go for it, it’s a pummelling experience, and it’s more in keeping with what I expect, but my god the guitar tone is massive. Absolutely massive. Deep Hunger keeps that upward momentum going, using the symphonic edge once more, and it’s knitted together so well, with melody lines that could come from a circus ride of your nightmares. And then they kick you in the face with a tempo change that brings more of that dark filth that was promised. This is a seat of the pants, hanging on by the nails build that keeps the melodic touches coming and is a belter of a song. And it keeps coming with The Dammed And The Slain bringing riffs from every angle in an attack on the senses. There is a melody line running through that is quality, underpinning the main rhythm at key points, and it’s just royal.

Final song, Consumed By Fire, keeps this high bar in place, and thus ending the album on a high point. It’s an uneven album to be sure, but there are more high than low spots here and it’s strange that the opening tracks are not a patch on the later ones, especially from Faces of Tragedy onwards. However, as I noted at the start, on the whole it’s solid and does have a lot of quality on here. Check it out because there are some incredible songs on here.