By: Charlie Butler
Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 21/04/2017
Label: Candlelight Records |
Spinefarm
Records
Coltsblood refine their unique brand of bleak, bludgeoning doom to
punishing effect on “Ascending Into Shimmering Darkness”. This is a mighty
collection that marks out the band as one of the most underrated heavy acts in
the world.
“Ascending Into Shimmering Darkness” CS//CD//DD track listing:
1.
Ascending Into Shimmering Darkness
2. Mortal Wound
3. The Legend of Abhartach
4. Ever Decreasing Circles
5. The Final Winter
2. Mortal Wound
3. The Legend of Abhartach
4. Ever Decreasing Circles
5. The Final Winter
The Review:
Coltsblood make a welcome return to dispense
more jet-black despair with new LP “Ascending
Into Shimmering Darkness”. This release may not have the cold, otherworldly
atmosphere of the UK trio’s previous work but it finds them growing in power
and heaviness through clarity of production and flawless riffcraft.
The
title track opens the album with a weighty demonstration of the band at their
best, thirteen minutes of snail-paced doom warped through a filter of grimy
death metal. “Mortal Wound” steps up
the pace with a raging onslaught of fetid black metal, sludge and even a burst
of crusty d-beat. It highlights a different aspect of Coltsblood’s
sonic battery and makes for a compelling shift in tempo in this record’s epic journey.
One
of the most distinctive and effective aspects of Coltsblood’s
sound is Jemma McNulty’s lead guitar work. The near constant high, buzzing
guitar lines are a stark contrast to the gut-churning low-end riffs and provide
an air of menace tempered with dark melody. The climax of “Ever Decreasing Circles” benefits from the dissolution of these
lead lines into a hypnotic cloud of bleary feedback that heightens the misery
as the track grinds ever slower into a spiral of despair.
“The
Final Winter” brings the album to a close in affecting fashion. It begins
with a lone, bare guitar that casts an air of resignation more redolent of
slowcore bands like Codeine than doom metal.
The quiet is soon shattered as the band lurch into a crushing funereal dirge. Haunting
keyboards heighten the air of dark melancholy in a way that recalls Pallbearer’s “Given
To The Grave” dragged to a colder, more hopeless
place.
Coltsblood refine their unique brand of bleak,
bludgeoning doom to punishing effect on “Ascending
Into Shimmering Darkness”. This is a mighty collection that marks out the
band as one of the most underrated heavy acts in the world.
“Ascending Into Shimmering
Darkness” is available here
FFO: Corrupted, Coffinworm, Conan, Dragged Into Sunlight
