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Tombstones, Red Skies and Dead Eyes: Fields under a Black Moon

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.

“Obstfelder” provides some clue of what’s coming with “The Other Eye,” the title-track and closer “Demon Cave” in its finale, which is slow, peppered with a tolling bell, and more doomed than stoned — the dead eyes to the red skies, if you will — but it’s not until “The Other Eye” actually arrives that that intent is made clear. Wind leads the way out of “Obstfelder” as it led into “Black Moon” and continues into “The Other Eye,” which Woldmo starts slowly and is gradually joined by Helstad and Godtland. The pace  is slower, the vibe moodier, and even when they hint at a boogie riff, it’s meaner somehow. When the fog clears, a Pentagram-style creeping emerges, and the vocals likewise hold a foreboding tension. Verses run their course and the song gets a shouting payoff, but what “The Other Eye” mostly does is affirm the shift that the ending of “Obstfelder” began, giving the album title and the album itself a different context. In the last minute or so, Tombstones touch on some of the Sleep-style chug of the first half of the record, but it’s worth realizing that essentially the two sides of their approach have switched, and what was the huge, slower ending of “Black Moon” is now the crux of “The Other Eye.” The title-track proffers rhythmic insistence and a more fervent push, but it too is immediately moodier, a faster charge building to a slowdown with some drawled-out layered singing that’s about as cultish as Tombstones get here. With “Demon Cave,” they hold to the grimmer feel, but provide a decent summation between that and the stoner plod of the earlier songs, giving Red Skies and Dead Eyes a fitting end if not one that’s a standout in the way of songs like “King of Daze” and “The Other Eye.” Especially for having been put to tape live, however, the record showcases a remarkable cohesion on the part of the band, and I’d expect that their intense studio experience  over the last couple years has resulted in a quickly developed comfort with the process. That’s how it sounds, anyway, and if it’s the case, I wouldn’t be surprised to find a fifth Tombstones release in 2014, since once an object the size of these rolling grooves gets in motion, it tends to stay that way.

Tombstones, Red Skies and Dead Eyes (2013)

Tombstones on Thee Facebooks

Soulseller Records

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