(written by Islander)
We’re about to premiere the entirety of a stunning new Wombbath album, which will take listeners Beyond the Abyss.
Our French contributor Zoltar (Olivier Badin) has quite a history of writing about metal, and considerable familiarity with both Wombbath‘s previous works and some of the band’s members. Putting that knowledge to good use, he wrote an extensive introduction to the album which can be found on its Bandcamp page. If we were smart we would just cut and paste that mini-essay here instead of just leaving a link to it, and then embed the album stream to let the music speak for itself.
But being smart and having fun aren’t always the same thing. And so to have our own fun, here are some further elaborate thoughts about what you’ll encounter on this new album today, just a couple days away from its March 14 release by Pulverised Records.
As you may know, the current incarnation of Wombbath is its second life. The first one lasted from about 1990 (even earlier under different names) through the release of the band’s debut album Internal Caustic Torments in 1993 and a few shorter releases, culminating in the Lavatory EP in 1994. Their second life began almost 20 years later, in a revival led by the band’s sole remaining original member Håkan Stuvemark. With Syn:drom vocalist Jonny Petterson by his side, and a changing group of bassists, drummers, and second guitarists, Wombbath have gone on to release five more albums (Beyond the Abyss being the sixth one since the revival), beginning with 2015’s Downfall Rising.
In the current lineup, guitarist Stuvemark continues playing a lead role, Pettersson is still behind the mic (as well as a guitarist), and the Wombbath armada is completed by guitarist (and violinist) Thomas von Wachenfeldt, bassist Matt Davidson, and new drummer Antti Silventoinen (Insert Remedy, ex-Dead Shape Figure).
On the new album, the songwriting was shared, with four songs written by Stuvemark, three by Pettersson, and three by von Wachenfeldt. As Zoltar recounts, Stuvemark thinks the results are “more evil and angrier” as compared to the band’s massive last album, Agma, “the most aggressive and bad-ass album we’ve ever done.” Continuing with that comparison, Pettersson describes the album as “dark, filthy and, in a way, more organic.”
Looking at a working man’s tools of the trade can usually give you a good idea of what they’re going to build. On the new album Wombbath‘s tools include a multitude of guitar tones. Some resemble an inadequately-oiled diesel engine running hot and belching choking exhaust, others like the whine of circle saws, and still others that bring to mind the shrill and shrieking tortures of demented and miserable wraiths.
Other tools include gut-loosening bass-rumbles and drums that smack the skull and punch the kidneys, as well as wild howls, gruesome bellows, jagged snarls, and strangled screams, all of them rabidly hostile, like a cavalcade of beasts driven mad by fury or pain.
Some people begin their albums with a “scene setting” intro track and others get right to the bloody red meat of the matter. In their intro track to the new album Wombbath go the scene-setting route, with slowly booming drums, eerily ominous strings, and gagging gasps. The red meat comes next with “Words Unspoken.”
That song is momentous and majestic in its opening phase (and again later) but then starts racing and ravaging — drums galloping, riffage maniacally gouging and writhing. A guitar-lead that gleams and swirls adds an element of sorcery to the madhouse rampage, and fast chugs and sounds of insectile skittering get their hooks in the head too. And, to prove the point of the intro track, “Words Unspoken” ends in gentle swirling eeriness.
Even with this first slab of Wombbath’s bloody red meat the band demonstrate a desire to make their music unearthly and arcane as well as pulse-pounding and punishing, creepy as well as violent. And while Stuvemark and Pettersson are right that the music is evil and angry, dark and filthy, the songs continue demonstrating dynamism and diversity, not only beyond the abyss but also beyond the traditional confines of old school Swedish death metal.
“A Symphony of Dread” sounds very much like its title. It heaves and moans as well as churns and eviscerates; clean guitars spiral, shiver, and wail; and the soloing sounds like the music of a desert djinn. Adding to the music’s mournful and exotic accents, the band also use another tool in their toolbox with a violin interlude by von Wachenfeldt.
Other songs also incorporate chilling, distressing, and mesmerizing melodies, traced by sounds that are clear and striking, in contrast to the generally crazed and crushing impact of everything else.
And speaking of other tools, Rotpit drummer Erik Barthold contributed a guest saxophone spot on the track “Malevolent“. That song is as nasty, violent, and brutishly pounding as its name portends, but the shrill, slowly flowing saxophone melodies are desolate and haunting, and the piercing guitar solos again invoke occult emanations. Indeed, the rich panoply of exotic, high-flying sounds makes it one of the album’s stand-out tracks.
Many others also stand out. In fact, you could throw a dart at the track list and come away pleased, regardless of where the spike strikes. Every one of the tracks provides a memorable combination of visceral, heavyweight power in greater and lesser degrees of turbulence, mutilating riffs that churn and crawl and chug like big jackhammers, penetrating guitar melodies that channel an array of dark moods and otherworldly spirits, and utterly wild vocal savagery.
The band also continually introduce other distinctive ingredients from song to song, including the head-moving bass-throb that opens the electrifying title track and that song’s punkish drum grooves, glorious horn-like and fret-melting solos, and moments of crashing majesty — as well as another classically elegant and soulfully sad violin performance in the finale.
Or we might mention the spellbinding chime-like guitar magic that begins “Deep Hunger“, or the wah-effected guitar solo in that song, or its moments of near-symphonic grandeur. Or the prominent body-moving bass-work in the harrowing “The Damned and the Slain“. Or the thoroughly doomed, end-of-days atmosphere created in the funereally paced “Consumed By Fire“, which in some ways loops back around to how the album began (now we are finally well beyond the abyss).
(It’s quite obvious that having three talented guitarists involved in the songwriting and the performances resulted in an album that’s this multi-faceted.)
So yes: The songs are evil and angry, dark and filthy, and of course they pay homage to many of the signal tropes of Swedish death metal traditions that this band helped establish long ago, but Wombbath vividly prove they’re not stuck in the past, and that’s really what makes their new album such a tremendous success. They’ve created dynamic and memorable songs, with a strong place for evocative and out-of-this-world melody as well as moments of towering grandeur and desolate grief in the midst of all the gutting fury and bombastic brutishness.
And with that… finally… we leave you to the music:
Beyond The Abyss was recorded, mixed, and mastered at Studio Unbound by Jonny Pettersson. The suitably ghastly cover art is the work of Columbian artist Felipe Mora (Consumption, Molder, Witchtrap, etc). Pulverised is releasing the album on jewel-case CD, vinyl LP (black, clear with splatter, and green with black marble), and digital formats, and it comes recommended for fans of Entombed, Convulse, Coercion, and all lovers of Swedish death metal.
PRE-ORDER:
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