EP REVIEW: Ex Oblivion – Tombs
TOMBS are, at approximately a decade and a half deep into their life as a band, one of the more prominent and celebrated black metal acts that the United States has produced since the turn of the millennium. Although the band have been making great music since 2007, after their third full-length album Savage Gold saw the light of day in 2014, they have gone on to be regarded as one of the most successful and consistently brilliant acts within the US’ excellent extreme metal scene, releasing one magnificent record after another, with their sound seemingly evolving and growing as the years progress. Their latest EP, Ex Oblivion, may on the surface look like a short, throwaway release, featuring two new tracks alongside a pair of covers and a remix, but a little more scrutiny shows this to be every bit as intriguing and stunning as any of their most recent releases.
Ex Oblivion provides an impressively cavernous and grandiose start to proceedings, with thunderous drums, huge, bleak rhythms and soaring, melodic leads all giving this a brooding and thoroughly punishing sound. Coupled with the sonorous, clean vocals that accompany the rest of the music, there’s a definite, ominous quality here, with a subtle hint of Gothic pomp that helps make for a brilliantly atmospheric yet intense opener. This is quickly followed by a great cover of the classic MOTÖRHEAD track Killed By Death, which does a great job of capturing the many charms of the original, complete with slick guitar work and throaty, rumbling bassline, while also applying a harsher black metal edge to it, especially with regards to the vocals, intricate guitar flourishes and a few double bass drum passages later on. It makes for a decent homage to a great song, whilst not deviating from the formula of the MOTÖRHEAD version too drastically.
The track that comes immediately after it is another cover, this time of Commit Suicide by polarising punk anti-hero GG ALLIN. It does a much better job of not only being recognisable, but also arguably marking a slight improvement on the original, thanks in no small part to the more polished production and significantly higher levels of musicianship on offer here, which makes the TOMBS rendition of this track outshine the one they were covering extremely easily.
Sombre Ruin, which first appeared on 2020’s Under Sullen Skies, appears next, with a remix that vastly alters many of the components of the original’s sound, notably the guitars, vocals and drums, and replaces them with a purely electronic sound that works well and manages to maintain a lot of the denseness and gravitas of the album version, with excellent results. It provides a great change of pace and an intriguing twist on some of the band’s more recent material. The EP’s final track, Murder Legendre, is the second new offering from this record, and carries forward the dark, claustrophobic elements of the previous track, being a far more ambience driven and dramatic piece of music, with booming, spoken word passages breaking up the hypnotic undercurrent of the music to make for an excellent conclusion of the record.
When EPs like this come out, which feature a couple of new tracks alongside some covers and/or remixes of tracks, it’s often very tempting to just view them as a collection of odds and ends that the band had lying around from a previous studio session, only being put out to keep fans interested with some new tunes, but Ex Oblivion is distinctly different. The fact that there’s a running theme, with both the cover tracks being about death, and the EP’s title track drawing direct influence from a Lovecraft story about a man entering the afterlife, shows that there’s been a lot more care and thought put into this than just cobbling a few tracks together and calling it a record. Furthermore, the output on this record is up to par with the high benchmark that the band tends to set themselves for their records, and doesn’t feel rushed or forced. From the as always brilliant musicianship to the varied approach and range of styles on offer, it’s another fantastic addition to TOMBS‘ already impressive back catalogue that will hopefully not be overlooked.
Rating: 8/10
Ex Oblivion is out now via Season Of Mist.
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