REVIEW: TOMBS 'PATH OF TOTALITY' (RELAPSE)

A plateful of fuck awaits anyone who denies the continued relevance of Relapse Records - they entered this world to churn out quality underground metal, and they slavishly continue along those lines. However the diversification of the label, most notably the rise and departure of Atlanta, Georgia's thick-necked mountain wizards Mastodon, left an groove so huge in the tiles of the Clever Bands Room that any other guitar-and-drum unit placed there inevitably slides towards it, slowly and gradually. And before anyone really notices, they've released a whole album of 'Remissions' cast-offs that'll earn them fawning reviews in shit magazines and circlejerk package tours with three identical sounding bands also being hyped to the heavens despite being indistinguishable from each other.

Like Baroness before them, New York's Tombs have aligned themselves in the direction of constipated bellowing and epic soundscapes over their last couple of releases. The urban filth that infused 2009's 'Winterhours' with its thick, groove rock crunch has been scattered somewhat in the breeze of their new, sweeping panoramas, but their idiosyncratic mix of influences and references tethers their musical identity like tangled shoelaces. A glorious, driving black metal deathmarch (check out the blasting on the title-track) has taken it upon itself to lead their disparate components through this new landscape, where Kylesa and Baroness long since lost sight of the trail, these Dark Medieval Riffs power their pulsing, throbbing mix of post-punk, hardcore - 'Vermillion' sounds like its been yanked from Today Is The Day's seminal 'Temple Of The Morning Star' - and semi-industrial through any doubt, leaving them free to cook up a thunderous broth in the cast iron cauldron of their own crystallised self-image.

Dense and apocalyptic, and thoroughly Mastodonic, 'Path Of Totality' is totally Tombs.