After hitting the UK in collusion with Widows last October (also with Wizard Fight on board for the run), Norwegian doomers Tombstones will once more hit the road alongside the Britsh outfit. Tombstones are touring in support of their fourth album, Red Skies and Dead Eyes (review here), on Soulseller Records, and the current stint is slated to hit the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland and Germany starting on Feb. 1.

The PR wire has it like this:

Tombstones / Widows – European Tour, February 2014

In the first week of February, Eclipse Productions brings you Northern Doom, set to captivate the European continent. The ultra-heavy Norwegian three-piece TOMBSTONES team up with UK-groovers WIDOWS for a 7-day trail, visiting The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland and Germany.

TOMBSTONES’ highly acclaimed album “Red Skies and Dead Eyes” was released in October by Soulseller Records, and has featured in many end-of -year lists and has received rave reviews from web- and fanzines throughout the world, including the likes of Terrorizer, Visions Magazine and Metal Hammer. In 2013 the band blew minds with three bludgeoning sets at Desertfest in London, found themselves supporting bands such as Clutch and Ufomammut, and are now ready to once again bring their crushing live act across Europe. TOMBSTONES can be described as the bastard child conceived by a filthy threesome with Sleep, Melvins and Bongripper.

Nottingham-based WIDOWS play music you can raise a beer and swing a fist to and they do it hard fast and loud, with bone crushing grooves and undeniable swagger!Influenced by the likes of Down, Kyuss, and Clutch, WIDOWS have spent the three years since the release of their debut EP (2010’s Raise the Monolith) building up an ever more impressive live set as they chewed up, spat out, and pounded venue after venue into submission, adding weight to their sets with regular new tracks and building the collection of songs that would later become their debut full length CD, Death Valley Duchess.

TOMBSTONES – Tourdates 2014
01.02.2014 – tba. – Gouda/Leiden – Netherlands
02.02.2014 – AMC – Antwerpen – Belgium
04.02.2014 – Le Glazart – Paris – France
05.02.2014 – L’Ecurie – Geneva – Switzerland
06.02.2014 – Zentralcafe (K4) – Nürnberg – Germany
07.02.2014 – Little Devil – Tilburg – Netherlands
08.02.2014 – Immerhin – Würzburg – Germany

https://www.facebook.com/events/1405057259741119/
https://www.facebook.com/tombstonesoslo
http://www.soulsellerrecords.com/

Tombstones, “Red Skies and Dead Eyes” official video

Norwegian trio Tombstones have released four albums in the last four years. Red Skies and Dead Eyes, on Soulseller Records, is the latest of them, and if the band works quickly, take it as a sign they also know what they’re doing. The six songs on their recorded-live fourth long-player clock in at a vinyl-ready 44 minutes, and whether it’s the Sleep-style thud of opener “Black Moon” or the later divergence into post-Electric Wizard terror-groove in “The Other Eye,” the Oslo-based three-piece of vocalist/guitarist Bjørn-Viggo Godtland, bassist/vocalist Ole Christian Helstad and drummer Jørn Inge Woldmo always seem to keep in mind a steady injection of individuality into the material. Part of that comes through the cave echo on Godtland and Helstad‘s vocals, which at times seem like just another rhythmic element at work to follow the riff — not a complaint; the riffs are worth following — but moreover, it’s about the atmosphere of Red Skies and Dead Eyes, which is full of darkened stoner metal idolatry that never quite veers completely into cult rock. It knows where that line is though and seems to enjoy straddling it, though when it comes to a song like “King of Daze,” Tombstones seem more preoccupied with the chugging itself than mystical posturing — true riff worship. But for the 10-minute “Obstfelder” and the 7:20 title-track, songs hover somewhere between six and a half and seven minutes long, which is roughly consistent if a little shorter on average than the cuts on 2012’s Year of the Burial, which set Tombstones to touring Europe and found them performing at Desertfest in London this spring, and the sampled wind that starts “Black Moon” both calls to mind YOB‘s “Burning the Altar” and sets the album to a rumble that continues throughout the rest of its course, the tones being consistent and large but malleable to the various moods in which the band puts them to use.

One could argue Red Skies and Dead Eyes is structured to work in vinyl sides — at very least it splits about even with three songs in each half — but it works well as a CD, whereby the shift into darker atmospherics on the later tracks seems more linear and gradual. When it comes to “Black Moon” and “King of Daze,” the focus is pretty clearly on riffing. Godtland leads with low, full fuzz, and Helstad‘s bass enhances the already mud-covered push while Woldmo offers a march on his snare. They may be looking unto the rays of the new stoner sun rising, but they’re doing so from their own angle, and though Gotland‘s vocals are somewhat buried — as they should be for this kind of tone-minded fare — when Helstad joins in, a dynamic is enacted that undercuts some of the superficial simplicity of what’s basically a shouting approach. Further, with about a minute left in “Black Moon,” they pull a quick instrumental turn into a different riff and tempo, and though there’s almost a hiccup at that point, it speaks to the instrumental chemistry the trio have developed over the course of their time together. A light touch of insistent High on Fire-style push at the start of “King of Daze” opens wide to one of the album’s most engaging grooves, and is in turn driven headfirst into a slowdown to more massive riffing and crashing, Woldmo keeping steady on what sounds like a considerably proportioned ride until the pace picks up again somewhat and the verse starts. Helstad takes the fore on vocals near the halfway point with Godtland joining shortly, and they cycle through again, this time skipping the slowdown to go right back into another verse that enacts a lumber all its own, ending big, ending faster than one might expect, and leading to the from-the-ground-up build of “Obstfelder,” which rounds out the first half of Red Skies and Dead Eyes with a few lead lines from Godtland (Billy Anderson, who’s also credited with additional engineering, is listed as having contributed “additional bending and feedback,” perhaps here, along with Petter Svee, who engineered and mixed in cooperation with the band), something largely avoided on the first two tracks.

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