Autumn Tomb is a side project formed by two members of The Sword and Steve Moore of Zombi. The trio had previously collaborated through cover albums released by their respective bands in the early 2020’s, and this new endeavor finds them shifting towards original material that opts for darker and heavy doom. Spread across five tracks, Autumn Tomb’s self-titled debut explores a lot of the traditional doom sound while also incorporating the moodier, hazy synth work that has defined Moore’s music over the years. It’s a familiar approach, but these veteran musicians pull it together in a way that has plenty of appeal and will keep you tuned in to the low and slow riffs.
Opener “Ages Lost” gives listeners a pretty good idea of what Autumn Tomb is all about, as it spends much of its run centered around a dense, weightier riff and crunchier drums that feels about as close to the traditional doom metal sound as you can get. But if you crank up the volume a bit, you’ll hear that Steve Moore’s trademark synths are there in the background filling out the sound a bit more and a little way into the song the tonality shifts to something noticeably more aggressive and a bit sludgier sounding. The subtleness of the synths on this song adds a more ominous and slightly hazy tone to the material, and it fuses well with the more jagged tonality of the guitar and bass. “Golgotha” and “Miracles of Pain” continue this formula, but the riff structure is expanded a bit and there are some sections that have a bit more of a stoner rock/metal vibe to them alongside the grittier doom. But it’s the last two tracks where Autumn Tomb shakes things up the most, as “Crumbling Thrones” has an extended synth intro that showcases Moore’s knack for drawing you in with otherworldly sounding melodies before the low rumblings and methodical grooves come back in to thump you right in the chest. Closer “Eternal Sea” speeds things up slightly and the synth work here gives off more of a gothic or funeral doom feel, and this helps to shake things up a bit more. Admittedly, while the first and last two tracks really drew me into the jagged riffing and darker atmosphere the other two felt just a bit too similar and were a bit harder to tell apart. It also feels like there’s quite a bit of room to expand the synths further and really transform how they weave into the denser, heavy doom riffs.
Another area where Autumn Tomb differentiates themselves from the other doom bands of this type is through the vocal work. Upon pressing play, you’ll hear distorted and almost whispered spoken word that makes things noticeably creepier and ominous sounding, but this transitions over to booming singing that is much more somber and reverberates over the recording. Around the two minute mark this shifts to very distorted and harsher screams that seem like they move in and out of the instrumental layers, coming out of the shadows to grab you without warning. Other moments on the album have more of a classic doom metal sound with deeper sung passages that have a good deal of power behind them and are drenched in reverb. Moore’s approach does add some more haziness and a moodier feel, but the occasional transitions over to harsher and extremely distorted vocals came as a nice surprise and gave the material an even darker edge.
As a fan of both The Sword and Zombi, I was excited to hear what Autumn Tomb had to offer on their debut and their take on darker doom, sludge, and stoner metal doesn’t disappoint. The vocals and synth work gives things a more somber and darker slant, sometimes approaching the murkier atmosphere of funeral doom, but with the songwriting emphasizing that classic genre sound. It does feel like some of the material doesn’t shake up its formula that much and there’s plenty of room to add in even more synths, but this is a great foundation to build off and one I’ll continue to get some mileage from. Autumn Tomb is available from Spaceflight Records.
-Review by Chris Dahlberg