After wallowing in the Goth tears of Swallow the Sun and swinging swords with Grand Magus, what Steel needed was a nice soak in the cesspool of reeking death metal. Finland’s Ashen Tomb promised me just such a therapeutic marination on their full-length debut Ecstatic Death Reign. Featuring members of God Disease and Inequity, Ashen Tomb deliver pig squealing, brain tenderizing old school death mixing the scuzz and moist ick factor of Autopsy with the skull-busting crunch and groove of Maul and Sanguisugabogg. On paper, this reads like the script to a timeless romance, but can they make the various brutalities coexist in holy headlock?
Tooth-removing opener “Body Bag” impressed right off the bat with a low-fi, no-IQ beatdown so grisly and savage as to render me a bloody skid mark on the pavement. Mammoth chug grooves, frantic blasts, sick riff-switches, and unbelievably foul vocals assault the senses without respite. It’s the aural equivalent of a bucket of bloody organs dumped over your head while you’re mid-yawn. So gooey, so sticky, so tasteless, I love it! Some of these riffs will install T-tops in your cranium and make your eyeballs pop out like a champagne cork. Give me 40 minutes of this swill and I’m in your debt! “Catharsis Through Torture” does give more, with a horrific sludge-doom influence that slows things down like a molasses avalanche at times. It’s effective and crushing. However, it’s here that the first sign of Terminal Bloat Disorder rears its fatuous assface. This is a 5-minute song that should be 4 minutes with the final minute dragging things out needlessly.
Nearly every subsequent song struggles with this handicap with varying degrees of impairment. The title track is such a rip-roaring boot party that it survives the extra weight around the middle and performs admirably. “Anamorphosis” gives you an absolute ass-kicking for 4-and-a-half minutes and then runs aground for the last minute-and-a-half. “Ancient Tombs Sealed with Dead Tongues to Preserve the Hidden One Slumbering in the Bowels of the Earth (Mummified in Cavernous Darkness)” warns of unnecessary length via that abomination of a title and fulfills its threat with 2 extra minutes of faffing, farting, needless jamming and uncalled for noodling. “Cave of Staring Eyes” fares better with a limited runtime and mostly remains on target to carpet bomb you with thick, chewy riffs and vomitous magnificence. “Heartworming” (great title) however, fails to make its shorter length pay dividends, overusing a cool riff until you want to blast Mariah Carey X-mas songs to drown it out. The excessive jiggery-pokery on Escatic Death Reign takes away from the 100-ton sledgehammer Ashen Tomb wield and waters down the final product. It also makes wading through the 41-minute runtime more challenging. The band can certainly rock monstrous death ditties capable of collapsing a small star. Sadly, only a few tracks get down to their dirty deeds unhindered by a fanny pack full of unsightly flab. It says something about Ashen Tomb’s talent that the material still exudes a bizarre Neanderthal charm despite the added ballast.
I’m a big fan of Ilkka Laaksonen’s completely inhuman vocals. His subterranean gurgles are phlegmy and repellant and his lapses into garbage disposal mode and Little Piggy porn are satisfyingly over-the-top and freaky deaky. Everything he touches gets impukeified and he makes the material worth sticking around for even when the songs refuse to stand down. Joonatan Mäkinen and Roni Oksanen deliver several garbage trucks full of nasty fretboard flatulence and plow the field of fever dreams with ginormous chugs, grooves, and greasy harmonies. I love what they do but they don’t know when to step back and let a song flow (or end). They tend to lapse into jammy disgressions that kill momentum and they’re also prone to over-repetition of good ideas. With a band as talented as this, these kinds of self-owns are tragic. I would be a poor excuse for a reviewer if I didn’t point out the tremendous job Valtteri Viro does on the kit. The man is everywhere at once and he must have several phantom limbs to make this kind of unholy ruckus.
There’s a 4.0 album hidden in Ecstatic Death Reign but it’s almost completely obscured by blubber, lard, and rubbery chubbery. Nearly every song exceeds its sell-by date, yet somehow this ends up a marginally successful descent into grotesque overindulgence. If Ashen Tomb tighten their approach by even 10%, look the fuck out! More swamp hog, less mud slog next time, okay? Tanks much.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Everlasting Spew
Websites: everlastingspew.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/ashentomb | instagram.com/ashentomb
Releases Worldwide: October 18th, 2024
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