Tomb - 鳳凰絕
I don’t know what the title of this one-song EP translates to exactly. I checked metal-archives.com and they had the translation as “the phoenix will be dead,” but other places have it translated differently (“the phoenix must die” or “death of the phoenix”). Tomb hails from mainland China, and their music can be best described as Depressive Black Metal with a Necro Black Metal production. The guitars are very thin and treble-heavy, which is a hallmark of the whole “we sucked all of the warmth from our guitars because we’re so anti-life” Necro movement. I’m not a fan of this kind of production, but in the case of Tomb, I’m going to make somewhat of an exception. This EP is pretty good. I think the atmospheric elements are what make it work, almost in spite of the production. The abundant use of acoustic guitar to add atmosphere with keyboards in the background makes this far more listenable than it would have been had it been straight Necro Black Metal with no frills. Without that eerie atmosphere, this would be just another generic Under the Sign of the Black Mark-worshipping Bathory clone with shit production. The Ambient interludes seem to divide this twenty-three minute long track into roughly three parts. I’ve heard that this EP was actually supposed to be two distinct songs, but information on the internet is conflicting regarding this, too. I guess the lack of information regarding Tomb and this EP stems from the fact that I can’t read Chinese and most of the other people putting information about this out there don’t know how to read Chinese, either. That aside, I’m interested in hearing more from this band. They have an interesting sound and though the production here leaves something to be desired, the material they had on display was good enough for me to add them to my watch list of bands that have some serious potential.
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