Ossuarium – Living Tomb

February 2019 – 20 Buck Spin

After being signed to 20 Buck Spin last year, Tomb Mold's Cerulean Salvation was propelled to relative fame, and gained a spot on Bandcamp's best-selling death metal records. Hopefully Ossuarium gain as much well-deserved recognition after releasing Living Tomb via 20 Buck Spin. Psychedelic is not a common term in the death metal underground, a world mostly described as brutal, ominous or repugnant – yet Ossuarium build upon the idea that neither are mutually exclusive, and mix both to great effect while staying within the realm of their genre.

Leads reminiscent of a detuned sitar reverberating through a cold Arabian night appear throughout the record, effectively building up or releasing tension and giving Living Tomb more momentum than it could ever gather with riffs alone. Malicious Equivalence shows the proverbial dark side of the moon, an evil approach to atmosphere built with the wails of lost souls recreated through effect pedals and the nastiest pinch harmonics since Vader. Living Tomb is a quirky album, from content to structure – a two piece End Of Life Dreams And Visions split by Malicious Equivalence is an original approach. So is Ossuarium's effort to write both psychedelic leads and sections reminiscent of Kerry King's most inaccessible work, but successfully mixing styles is what they do best.

Despite lauding Living Tomb's original ideas, it's still a somewhat orthodox death metal record with some catchy hooks like the intro to Corrosive Hallucinations, a riff I'll be mindlessly ripping off for years to come. Everything falls into place, supported by a voice that might actually be coming from a coffin 6 feet under. As a side note, the cover art was done by the legendary Dan Seagrave, and while it's not his most gruesome or detailed work, the crumbling walls of cold blue stone housing sculptures of bone like some abandoned catacomb feel fitting for such an album, both melancholic and menacing.

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