T. O. M. B. - UAG

T.O.M.B. (standing for Total Occultic Mechanical Blasphemy) could soon become a name to watch in the most avant-garde fringe of a certain strain of black-metal-derived noise. Behind this mysterious moniker lies Jack Gannon, a rough-edged American who, twenty years ago, played in Deteriorate, a cult death-metal band from the Philadelphia area, and who now handles pretty much everything in T.O.M.B. on his own (not for nothing does he go by the name No One).

“UAG” (said to stand for “Undercovered Ancient Gateways”) is the fifth album credited to this elusive project and the first for Crucial Blast (the earlier records all came out either self-released or on tiny CD-R labels).

The title track simply serves as a gateway to what we're about to hear: a ferociously maximalist fresco in which metallic percussion takes the lead role, all set against a backdrop of death and destruction (the album was recorded, not by chance, in abandoned crypts, sanatoriums, morgues and other such macabre, pathological settings) where there seems to be no redemption for the living. Having left every last trace of black metal behind, Gannon throws himself headlong into madly percussive symphonies reminiscent of Z’ev (“Mausoleum Witchcraft,” one of the album's high points, is a glaring example) and of the industrial music (also built on percussion) of early SPK (“Cadaver Transmission” and “Perverse Crematory Pleasures”), who were likewise masters of the “mortuary.”

“TORMENT” is wrapped in a thick, dark fog where everything is impenetrable. Wolf Eyes peek through on “Blood Vortex,” while “EMPLEH” and “Serpent Moon Seance” are tracks built out of reverb and psychedelic refrains.

“Graveyard Requiem” is the most static episode, the one most classically faithful to the dictates of dark ambient.

Though far from the chromatic imagination of Europe's Gnaw Their Tongues (to stay with an artist on the same label), Jack Gannon knows what he's doing. This “UAG” could already be considered something of a minor classic within this peculiar strain of black metal, which is no longer really “metal” and which, before long, won't be all that “black” either. Its biggest flaw is a style that's still too “monolithic,” but I believe it will only be a matter of time before truly giant steps are taken.

Also worth mentioning is the digipack artwork, done in a graphic style straight out of the Absu playbook.

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21/04/2012