We live in dark times, and yes, I remind you of that in the middle of summer, one of the warmest and brightest times of the entire year. But the calendar does not dictate how we feel, and it does not just make things right because it’s nice outside. The bad tidings sink into our cells and wait for us, even when we’re feeling good, even when positivity appears at reach. It’s also a ruse.
“Haunted Funeral Creations” is the first record from Tumulation, a band that features members of Conjurer, and while that group whips ass, the level of darkness and, well, tumult that faces you here is insurmountable. The band—vocalist/guitarist IM, guitarist/bassist FS, drummer WS—puts you to the test, applying pressure and pushing ugliness that definitely will make your heart swell for that classic death/doom sound, but there are elements more intrusive here. Something that wants to bore into your brain and change it for the worse. A strange spirit that will transform your psyche for good.
“Emergent Chaos Spirals” is an introductory cut that gives you a taste of what’s ahead, that being doom clouds, guitars rising, and sounds threatening before we smash into “Shattered Under the Eclipse” that encircles with riffs dripping with evil. Pummeling and dark, the growls menace as the blood flows, sweltering melodies putting its boot on your throat. The riffs manage to get even darker, the playing flutters, the growls burn, and the pace slows into a pressure violence that makes breathing difficult. “Astral Sickness” arrives amid the drums leading a driving attack, guitars flaring up, the vocals slithering through the mud. A doomy burn presses into flesh, the drums continue to destroy, and the pounding is relentless, the surroundings corroding and torching the hairs on your arms. “Rorschach” opens with a vampiric clip, something that follows several of the other songs, and everything gets ugly and burly, the growls boiling blood, the guitars trucking. The playing is sooty and heavy, crawling through cobwebs, gutting with a vicious rampage that rips to the end.
“Sterilizing Winds” blisters, and heavy blows land without mercy, the melodies feeling both spindling and punishing. The vocals retch as bloody, muddy clobbering have heavy impact, the attack gets more menacing, and the massive storm tears through the atmosphere. “Rites of Forgotten Misery” stomps in, going for a sonic changeup, mashing and battering with precision and might. The growls make your nerve endings ripple, and then mournful leads pull a pall over everything, the steamy penetration gets more oppressive, and chaos piles up and destroys bones. “Bound to the Rakasha” soaks in doom before the playing blasts and sends shrapnel flying, the growls increase the levels of danger, and the metallic ooze melts and bleeds like a river reaching out for you. The vocals drag through slag piles, the playing hits ever harder, and the final moments char flesh, its ash trail unmistakable. Closer “Abject Maelstrom Specters” is a quick instrumental outro with slowly trickling sounds, thunderclaps reverberating, fading into a foggy storm front.
Tumulation bring doomy death heat so thick, it makes it feel like trying to breathe inside a giant loaf of bread just pulled out of the oven. “Haunted Funeral Creations” sounds as much like a summary of these eight songs as a title slapped across this morbid creation, so you can’t say you’re surprised at the end of this thing. This is a massive debut album, one that is weighty, humid, and devastating, the stepping-off point for a band that’s primed to get even uglier as time progresses.
For more on the band, go here: https://www.facebook.com/tumulation
To buy the album, go here: https://hammerheartstore.com/
For more on the label, go here: https://www.hammerheart.com/
Meat Mead Metal 