Glacial Tomb “Glacial Tomb” [Gilead Media]

atavist   7/19/2022   12-inch, A Library

Metal from Denver, selecting and alloying elements of death and doom, blackened around the edges just so. Technical, but not dizzyingly technical. Thick, but not bone-crushing. Track A3 nearly buckles under its own weight. Tracks A2 and A4 have a momentum to them that carries them along better to this reviewer’s ears. The tracks are seldom fast, but also they aren’t mid-aughts glacial advances of doom riffs. I’ve been listening to a lot of projects lately that take this or that element to an extreme, while Glacial Tomb tread more to the middle. Skewed perspective aside, it’s still heavy and well-executed. The glaciers aren’t advancing, but receding to their oblivion, revealing a chaos of pain exposed to the sun. Soaring guitar solos that can’t help but be bright and soar above the murky detritus below. Each of the three band members experienced deaths of close relatives within months of recording the album, and they channeled that grief into the work.