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Nov 20, 20225 min read

Tombs - Under Sullen Skies (2020)

FROM THE CRYPTS - CELEBRATING PAST ALBUM RELEASES in the HISTORY of HARD ROCK & HEAVY METAL…



On November 20, 2020, Tombs released their fifth full-length studio album Under Sullen Skies via Season of Mist.



Background:

Under Sullen Skies delivers a Blackened fury of Extreme Metal, intertwining with savage, Doom-laden brutality. Focusing on dark and foreboding tales of folklore and the occult, it captures the agonizing misery, furious vexation, and psychological turmoil that is ravaging humanity at present day. Under Sullen Skies not only sees mastermind Mike Hill and the band expanding their creative and collaborative comfort zone, but includes a wealth of guests, such as Intregrity’s Dwid Hellion, Six Feet Under’s Ray Suhy, Black Anvil’s Paul Delaney, Psycroptic’s Todd Stern, Black Crown Initiate guitarist Andy Thomas, Ides Of Gemini/Black Math Horseman’s Sera Timms, and Cat Cabral.


About the album, Mike Hill says;

“Everyone contributes on this record and the door has always been open for others to do so. There has always been this misconception that I’m some sort of tyrant always telling people what to do and play. The fact of the matter is that most of the time I outwork people; that’s just the way I am. No one is ever going to outwork me on any level in any area of my life and I was always coming up with material. Now, I have these maniacs in the band who are equally motivated and there’s a whole new life injected into Tombs. That’s awesome and I love it. These days we’ll try anything and we actually write stuff and throw it out because it’s not perfect. It’s more like a writing committee, which I really appreciate. It’s not just me writing everything. It’s a big difference from “The Grand Annihilation” which was basically a solo record.”

Under Sullen Skies is this lineup’s second kick at twisting Black Metal’s DNA around dank emotional corners, psychological turmoil and the urban underbelly all of which is unavoidably coloured and touched by the present-day status of life on this here Earth.


“The album’s title came during all this and the sort of post-apocalyptic world we’re living in,” Hill explains. “It encapsulates an overall feeling of gloom and depression which is pretty much how we’ve been living for most of this year. The title was the last piece to fall into place. I remember standing on the roof of the building I was living in at the time on a grey day and it was raining – actually, it wasn’t even raining; it was a half-assed attempt at rain! – and depressing and I just thought, “What a sullen sky” and it just stuck with me.”


The album starts with Bone Collector, a furious blast of Melodic Black Metal that shifts gears towards an anthemic fist-pumping slog through the Goth Rock-Thrash Metal Venn diagram (illustration that uses circles to show the relationships among things or finite groups of things). Void Constellation takes as many cues from Peaceville Three Gloom and Doom (Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, and Anathema) as it does the Death Metal stomp of Obituary and Incantation. Descensum mines the various well-worn parts of Ride the Lightning (Metallica) for influence before blasting the doors open with some startlingly spacious chromatic single-note atonality. As the album progresses, further textures and moods are employed via acoustic instrumentation and keyboards as well as sampled soundscapes all butting heads with furious second wave Black Metal and sly nods to Death Rock heroes The Sisters Of Mercy and Fields Of The Nephilim, all of the band’s motivations and interests being dropped into the chameleonic pair of tracks closing the album, Sombre Ruin and the appropriately titled Plague Years.


“Barren stands out as the song that’s most collaborative,” notes Hill. “Justin wrote the bulk of the riffs on that one, that sort of NWOBHM/Scorpions ending part is something I came up with, Matt added a bunch of guitar harmonies over it and Drew’s bass is laid thick underneath. That one is one of the biggest group efforts and one of the strongest songs on the record.


I explore a lot of the archetypes that are used in folklore on this record, like werewolves and vampires which I’ve always been interested in, and on a song like Secrets of the Black Sun I talk about the finite nature of our time on this planet, that nothing is really permanent and being aware of that whether as an individual or as a civilization, which I guess fits in with the pandemic and the changes that are going on. There are all kinds of other people, civilizations and creatures that have come and gone long before us and if you think about it over a long enough time span, everyone’s life expectancy goes down to zero.”



The new album not only sees Hill expanding his creative and collaborative comfort zone by wholly embracing the offerings of his band mates, but he’s also let down the drawbridge to allow folks from beyond the immediate Tombs family to include what he describes as “mad guest spots.”

“There’s Cat Cabral, who does the spoken word piece on Angel of Darkness. She’s not a musician per se; she’s more from the occult and witchcraft world. I’ve been friends with her for a really long time and she’s a great resource for esoteric knowledge. She’s also an actress who has done plays and commercials and been in films, so I figured she’d be the perfect person to deliver dialogue in an emotionally deep way, and be good at taking direction. Ray Suhy from Six Feet Under rips the guitar solo in Barren and that solo is its own masterpiece, in my opinion. Black Crown Initiate and former Tombs live guitarist Andy Thomas contributed a guitar solo in Void Constellation. Todd Stern from Psycroptic plays the solo in Mortem. Sera Timms from Ides of Gemini and Black Math Horseman does guest vocals on Secrets of the Black Sun. We’ve got Integrity’s Dwid Hellion singing the chorus on The Hunger and Black Anvil’s Paul Delaney also doing a couple of verses on Angel of Darkness. So, yeah, there are a bunch of people on there and it’s like a community effort which I enjoy. I like involving people I respect and having them be a part of the whole thing.” - Mike Hill

“Under Sullen Skies is a dark and introspective album,” he asserts;

“It’s not a happy record that anyone is going to use to get pumped up on a Friday night. We wanted to pull out the stops, go full-on and make a nice body of work. I could care less if anyone likes the band or not because I’ve been through so many ups and downs with this thing that I don’t give a fuck if people enjoy the music. I know I like it, I know the guys in the band like it and we’re just rocking and rolling. This record and the EP came out about as close as I could imagine to what I have in my brain about how this band should sound. The whole trajectory of the band has had each record never quite hitting, but Monarchy of Shadows and Under Sullen Skies have both really come out how I envisioned the songs to be.”

Note: The reviews shared here are for historical reference. The views and opinions expressed within are not always supported (in full or in part) by Into the Wells. — E.N. Wells



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