Album Review: Glacial Tomb - Lightless Expanse
Reviewed by Sam Jones
There are some bands that just skirt your attention, only to explode into full clarity when a new album is announced. In this instance that band is Glacial Tomb, having formed in 2016 and hail from Colorado, United States, sporting a curious combination of sludge, death and blackened metal. Having got started very quickly with an EP and Singles, the band’s first full length would come in 2018, a self-titled release, yet that would be it for some time and the band would go quiet. A Single in 2020 came out but it wouldn’t be until earlier this year that another Single would drop followed by the news of this record: Lightless Expanse. Featuring bassist David Small’s first album credit with Glacial Tomb, whose experience alongside vocalist and guitarist Ben Hutcherson throughout Khemmis, this should prove to be an interesting release as we see these guys play metal worlds away from Khemmis’ particular doom soundscape. Set for a September 20th release date via Prosthetic Records, Lightless Expanse is the band’s first album in six years and I was more than ready to see what was what.
If there’s anything we may discern from Glacial Tomb, even in the opening tracks, is that they are not here to play around. The band possess this crushing, apathetic approach to songwriting that isn’t to be toyed with, but with that said they aren’t the most cavernous band you’ll experience this year. Though their performance bristles with energy and their guitar tone can be simultaneously colossal and piercing, the band are merciful on your senses; you can go into this record without much prior experience with sludge or black metal and come away from Lightless Expanse pretty well off and, if anything, it serves as delicious gateway album to more seething release by other such bands. The band can move with striking speed alongside blast beats and riffs that get the blood pumping, but can then introduce steadier riff sequences that help bridge the gap to the next segments all the while incorporating solos equally melodic and cerebral. Being capable of playing music that’s undeniably heavy but never once has its hands on our throat is hard to pull off, yet Glacial Tomb still apply that sense of danger to their sound that makes it impossible to turn away from.
I’ve come to realise throughout my time in metal that I’m not a huge fan of piercing vocals; I’m more acquainted with the bellowing, guttural forms but Glacial Tomb provide a screeching delivery that isn’t too harsh so someone like myself who isn’t a massive fan of higher vocals can get fully on board with the vocal performance. However I think the vocals work predominantly because the screeching style isn’t the sole delivery on record; the band throw in a mix of visceral and gruff vocals to counteract each other, it’s all the more impressive when it appears that these two vocal deliveries are uttered by the same individual: frontman guitarist Ben Hutcherson; how he manages to maintain control and discipline between two incredibly different vocal deliveries is beyond me. I also appreciate how these different vocal performances are being forever switched back and forth without the changing ever impacting on our ability to enjoy the songwriting. Much like the songwriting which we’ll cover soon, it feels perfectly natural to Glacial Tomb’s identity and you can’t imagine Lightless Expanse being anything other than what it is vocally speaking. It’s also a triumph of the mixing too, how the band can balance such an array of elements together and not once does it feel like we’re at the risk of becoming overwhelmed.
Fusing the elements of death, black and sludge metal together is a tall order and only a few bands in my experience can managed to pull it off; we may now add Glacial Tomb to that pantheon now also. It’s not merely that the band have found some niche that their songwriting excels in, it’s how their songwriting constantly finds some new avenue down whatever track you’re listening to, to evolve and develop along new lines you may not have been expecting whatsoever. The band can bring these cinderblock riffs down on your cranium before switching things up with a riff sequence that’s icy as the crevasse all the while throwing blast beats and alternating patterns in for good measure. Now, one may read this and think they throw everything at you at once, but Glacial Tomb possess a remarkable innate ability to carefully structure their chaos and thereby make their onslaught appear seamless. There is no one way that the band will hurl their songwriting at you, so whilst it seems like this swirling cacophony it’s actually incredibly ordered and is thereby far easier for us to digest and make sense of what’s occurring in the moment.
In a way, Lightless Expanse is a nigh on progressive work of death metal owing to how ever-changing its songwriting proves to be. We’ve touched upon how the band are capable of fusing so many disparate components together and avoid the record from being this cluttered mess, but there are a good few tracks here where vocals can become completely absent and we’re left only with the instrumentation and, even then, it refuses to play by conventional rules of riff-verse-solo-riff-back to vocals again; the instrumentation truly does take on a life of its own and it really is as adventurous as it’s been aforementioned. You’ll be hard come by to find a single track that sounds remotely by another; the inventiveness of the band’s riffs and track progression is stellar as well as their pacing. Glacial Tomb harness pacing like few bands I’ve encountered this year; their ability to play at frantic speed and then bring their momentum to an immediate halt with zero preparation is as jarring as it is striking. Even then, it feels perfectly aligned with the vibe Glacial Tomb bring to the table and while it can sound peculiar at first, the further you venture into Lightless Expanse the more natural and fundamentally essential you recognise it is to the band’s identity. I know I wouldn’t have it any other way.
In conclusion, Glacial Tomb’s Lightless Expanse is a fascinating, destructive release that will have you constantly questioning where the band could possibly take you next, and these questions only multiply as the record proceeds to the end. Their fusion of black, sludge and death metal is so interesting and I appreciate that they don’t just segment it up so you know what style they’re playing at any moment; it’s all at once thrown at you in a way that’s extremely concise even when their songwriting is alternating from one end of the spectrum to the next. Nothing is set in stone for the band as they continuously demonstrate a prowess for hurtling you time and again into new vistas that have you wondering what else the band are capable of. From pacing to vocals to instrumentation to soloing to drumming, all things for the band are thrown up in the air and you’re merely left to interpret it as you see fit. But for all this madness it’s incredibly easy to digest what’s happening and I never once wondered what was occurring, more so I was happy to be left in the dark too for the there was the excitement of not knowing what would come next. That’s when you know a band has you completely and utterly. Lightless Expanse is this bombastic, massive album that still understands it needs to be level-headed with its audience, and aids to elevate Glacial Tomb to a band I’ll be sorely looking out for in the future.
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