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DOOMBRINGER
The Grand Sabbath

Nuclear War Now! Productions (2014)
Rating: 7/10

This Polish quartet has certainly taken its time in releasing a debut full-length album. Having formed back in 2007, the band – consisting of Medium Mortem (vocals), Old Coffin Spirit (bass, vocals), Tribes Of The Moon (guitar) and Sepulchral Ghoul (drums) – has spent most of its existence releasing two demos, an EP and a split project with fellow countrymen Goat Tyrant. But, The Grand Sabbath is finally here, and it’s an album that should please anyone with a taste for moody deathly black metal.

With that important marrying of slower, doomier elements and faster, sepulchral segments, this is very much catchy extreme metal forged from the underground and yet with good enough production to allow each instrument – particularly the bass – to breathe. Vocally, Mr Mortem is a rather standard hoarse crooner whose foreboding chants and barks perfectly complement the more haunting elements of this seven-track platter.

With the opening ‘Labyrinth Of Everlasting Fire / Ecstasy Of Witch Blood’ we’re treated to what is mostly a mix of slow, doomy and grating guitars with bursts of raw speed concocted of pacey percussion and seething chords. It’s not the most original or in fact mind-blowing slab of deathly black metal I’ve heard and it has a predictable nature about it at times, but the cold air of evil which hangs over this opus is one to be admired.

From the frothing frenzy of ‘Ominous Alliance’ with its varying vocal yawns and moans, to the mesmerising prowess of the lumbering ‘Vessel Of Gifts’, this is still a truly murky experience built upon malevolent rhythms and dank oppression which also comes to the fore on the weighty decomposition of ‘Children To Moloch’ and the simmering intensity of ‘The Sleep Of Thanatos’ with its hellish backdrop of grey percussion fronted by the maniacal vocal traits of Medium Mortem.

Doombringer sets out to construct monolithic slabs of doom-laden deathly black metal laced with a pungent whiff of the unholy, the overall result being an album that successfully fuses speed and sombre slowness, even if at times the combo does have a propensity to air towards the predictable. Fans of, say, Mortuary Drape should find much to savour here within the murk. Having said that, Doombringer may have to up the ante on future releases if they are to stand out from the crowd, because deathly black metal seems to be the order of the day for many bands today and a great deal of these acts do sound very similar. Thankfully, with Medium Mortem’s vocal yelps, these guys do seem to have that extra punch of perverse spice to keep them in good stead and I wait with baited breath for the next unholy chapter.

Neil Arnold

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