It’s time for Coltsblood to end their silence.
Six years have passed since their last opus, but Jem McNulty (guitar), John McNulty (bass/vocals/keyboards, ex-Conan) and Jay Plested (drums, Black Magician) have regained their inspiration to offer us their third album, Obscured into Nebulous Dusk, in collaboration with Translation Loss Records.
Until the Eidolon Falls exposes us from its very first second to the greasy sound of John‘s bass, but also to the disquiet created by the dissonance of the guitar and drums, before the three instruments together develop a very slow, ethereal rhythm. The macabre screams appear shortly before the track’s halfway point, reinforcing the oppression already in place and making it last for a long moment before the sound deigns to fade away in a controlled feedback to make way for Waning of the Wolf Moon, the only track on the album that doesn’t exceed ten minutes. There’s a much more aggressive approach to the track, but even if some raging blast parts are introduced, the sound remains heavy and haunting, packed with almost continuous hypnotic harmonics before a break where they become haunting, welcoming Adam Clarkson (Corrupt Moral Altar) for a few words. The track ends like its predecessor, but Transcending the Immortal Gateway takes its place to surround us with an enigmatic guitar sound on which the musicians anchor themselves to create a tortured rhythm that advances at an ever-lethargic pace, but takes the time to let the vocalist terrify us. The sound metamorphoses into a melancholy lament before fading away on Obscured into Nebulous Dusk, where the keyboards welcome us, followed by the whole band developing a massive rhythmic pattern where intense screams come to life, giving this final composition a much more bellicose and solemn atmosphere, still allowing the growl to return on the last part.
Obscured into Nebulous Dusk is one of the heaviest albums I’ve listened to in a while. Somewhere between Sludge and Funeral Doom, Coltsblood strike hard to mark their comeback!
85/100