This is the debut album from Canadian death metal band Scorching Tomb.
Ossuary contains 30 minutes of crushing death metal, and it offers a real treat for fans of the modern old-school, (if you know what I mean). Scorching Tomb have created a cracking record. Let’s get to it.
Ossuary is an album steeped in the old-school, but delivered with a contemporary interpretation of the style. Metallic hardcore provides an extra pit-friendly dynamic for Scorching Tomb to exploit, but ultimately simply adds another barbaric tool to the essence of monstrous death metal heaviness that Ossuary exemplifies. The album sounds great sonically too, with a production that’s crisp, punchy, and meaty. The songs take advantage of this, showcasing Scorching Tomb’s grasp of deathly riffs, murderous melody, and guttural growls.
The songwriting is stripped back to the essentials, while never neglecting the need for actual songs. It’s deliberately crude, but effective; there are more hooks and catchy moments here than you’d probably expect. This is also true of the album’s variety to an extent. Relatively speaking, within its chosen overarching framework, the songs adopt a few different paces, ideas, and delivery mechanisms across the record; Scorching Tomb seem equally happy tearing out searing blast beats, demolishing with colossal breakdowns, unleashing steamroller groove, chugging and stomping along like lunatics, or doing whatever else they feel like getting up to across these eight tracks. Basically, it’s a damn good collection of songs.
This is a really fun record. It’s brutal and crushing, but has actual songs with hooks you can grasp on to. And riffs – so many riffs! Scorching Tomb manage to successfully channel the spirit of old-school death metal through a modern lens. Ossuary is a strong addition to the growing array of albums spewed out by a slew of newer acts playing this sort of atavistic heaviness. The good thing here though is that Scorching Tomb play this style better than most. I really like Ossuary.
It surely can’t be long before we see Scorching Tomb’s name plastered around all over the place, as there are far weaker bands out there with much higher profiles. Until then, stick on Ossuary and get ready to destroy.
Very highly recommended indeed.
Wonderbox Metal 