ninehertz

"Blackened doom noise from Chicago". It's an enticing premise alone, and holds true as a self description, but even that doesn't do justice to the power of Our Earth is a Tomb, neither in scope or in portraying how good this album is.

The primary sensation is darkest and harshest end doom, as they allude - dense, heavy and satisfyingly slow, it would make good bedfellows to the likes of Vermin Womb or Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean. There's a scorched earth, musically nihilist approach; the bellowing, land clearing riff that ends Flaw is an experience more akin to a series of detonations. One track of eleven in and I was already completely sold, and aurally bruised.

There is variance though - there's a blackened hardcore tinge frequently present, but in the mix to make a combined cacophony. They conjure blackened worlds of misery, tracks occasionally crumple under the sheer terror of it all. There's the harsher faces of post-metal every now and again, such as on Hear Our Prayer, forming a noxious atmosphere, and then, particularly as the album progresses wonderful tracks that are in the worlds of Full of Hell or Thou.

This is evident on Without Dreams and N/A, the former of which takes it further with faint strains of grind and death influencing the hardcore battery, reminding me a little of Knoll. Noise appears more towards the end, on the static-scarred doom of Bottom Feeder and then on the pure noise of Unto. It ends with a nine minute wrecking ball of Primitive Man style heaviness.

It is a glorious album, a real success, recalling the best of extreme music, but then folding so many ideas in at the centre of a Venn diagram of multiple genres, so that this stands not in reverence to their peers but shoulder to shoulder.