ninehertz

In a genre prone to silly band names, this may be the silliest – and what’s strange is that I’m not sure how serious Tumanduumband (a two-man doom band) are – the name would suggest not, but they seem pretty hot on the whole satanism thing so who knows.

What is clear is their commitment to a pure and desperate doom sound, with Hail Satan, Triumph Awaits setting a bar higher than they’ve been before. There are three monstrous tracks here, setting their stall out from the off with a real trudge, seemingly reluctantly dragged away from whatever witchcraft they were up to, the distracted mind sluggish to recall the notes. This isn’t new to doom of course, but Tumanduuumband really push the patience levels to its margins. It shimmers, wallows in its own self-infested filth; instrumental as though vocals are a bourgeois excess, so languid to be almost comatose.

High from huffing on occult supplies and bass heavy low end, middle track Alive in Death is extremely satisfying in its devilish tone, occasional horror film samples flash by in lieu of vocals, doom simplified to its base elements – but that’s occasionally enough, this being a perfect example. The closing title track is a mammoth eighteen minutes and more long; shimmering atmospherics, so ghostly and mysterious it feels more like the backing soundtrack of a ghost house adventure than a mere song, or perhaps, more fittingly, the surround sound of a satanic mass out in the woods.

I must have rammed this point home enough already, but in summation – this record does very little. Songs pass by the ten-minute mark with a cumulative output other bands – even doom bands – would have achieved within what they’d think was a slow burn two-minute song start. This isn’t a damning assessment – doom is flirting with the extremes increasingly nowadays, particularly with focus on its general aesthetics of minimalist pace and purity in tone. Tumanduumband are the warlock scientists pushing out those hypotheses to see where they may break, and Hail… is the experiment we all get to bear witness to.