Tombstalker – Black Crusades

Uniform Metal

This reviewer’s cats did not like this record. Even though one of them is named after the Lovecraftian goddess of chaos. It’s a fairly noisy and gruff affair. But that doesn’t always make for a compelling listen.

The acoustic opener to Tombstalker’s Black Crusades may have prepared you for a Pallbearere-esque affair of emotive, subtle, yet powerful metal. Instead, we get rote metalcore. There are paeans to thrash, cookie-monster vocals, and metal riffs punctuated with the occasional hardcore blast-beat and breakdown. It’s a trebly mix bathed in distortion and double-kick. While listening to the record the first time, you may find yourself checking to make sure the first song after the instrumental opener isn’t repeating. “Chaos Undivided” and “Blood Thirster” are not just cut from the same cloth, they are the same cloth.

But, there’s reason to forgive Tombstalker the repetition and going back to the well—this genre of death metal meets hardcore just doesn’t offer a lot of diversity. There is truly interesting brutal, barking metal and hardcore that evinces subtlety and diversity: Baptists and The Body immediately come to mind. Tombstalker are fine players all the way around and there is some notable riffing. But it fails to distinguish itself not only from the aforementioned bands but from one another. Everything follows par for the course, save the occasionally “creepy” spoken word intro.

“Plague Father” is one potential bright spot, teasingly referencing that late 90’s/early oughts boom of groove-heavy sludge (early Baroness, Mastodon, etc.). But really, the record lacks the atmosphere and jaw-dropping, stop-on-a-dime technicality and unique arrangements of Baptists and the visceral wantonness of The Body. There’s nothing that surprising or interesting on Black Crusades. There’s nothing awful. Again, they’re all fine players. This is their 3rd release and first since 2014. It’s possible they may have stewed on this too long and as a result lost some perspective. That’s also easy in this genre unless you are visionary like one of the aforementioned bands or have one of those genre defining records like Entombed’s Wolverine Blues. There’s reason to pay attention to this band moving forward as they have plenty of talent. They just need to figure out how to carve their own niche in a limited sort of space and find ways to avoid coming back to the same well one too many times.