Beyond the Lake of Madness

Coltsblood have two rules - keep it slow and keep it filthy. Crawling at just below a snail's pace, this well named band never treads into mid-paced territory. This release slowly slithers along, and much like a snail, leaves a disgusting trail everywhere it treads. The leads, drawing parallels to funeral doom, offer the only faint glimmers of light. Everything else is simply devoid of light, melody or the will to live. This release features a highly despondent sound, being draped in the black sheet of all consuming hatred and depression. Blistering layers of feedback are met with monolithic crushing riffs and hints of morose melody contained in the leads.

It's hard to pinpoint this into an exact sub-genre, there's definitely sludge present, it has the leads and speed of funeral doom, features a prominent amount of drone and at times even reminds of the torture doom scene. That aside, this has to do with all things doomy. If not anything else, this is crushing. The weight it holds is tremendous, this could easily decimate a small city. The riffs trudge along at a miniscule pace, almost as if trying to stay rooted in one place as a strong force slowly manages to drag them along. This not so gentle giant is truly huge in stature, slowly but surely pummeling down all that's in its way.

The guitar tone is strong. Filthy, thick and thoroughly sludgy, it is mired in dirt and caked in mud. The meat of the material itself is prone to droning, although layers of feedback often crawl along, as well. This creates a thoroughly unfriendly feeling. The riffs love to plod, which surely only works because of the mammoth stature of the guitar tone. The bass is especially sludgy, although is often drowned out in the massive haze of the guitar tone. The drumming similarly has a resentment for anything faster than a crawl, but still is not as unhurried as the guitar. The vocalist often sits back and lets the instrumentation do the talking, but when he does come in, his voice is not quite as harsh as one might expect. It would be something that would often be featured on a slightly less filthy sludge album. While a completely demented scream would be quite appropriate here, this does kind of give this a bit of tangible songwriting, from the last place you'd expect tangible songwriting. The leads are what you'd expect from the dirtier side of funeral doom. Although this release is still unrelentingly bleak and unwashed, a bit of bittersweet melody certainly doesn't hurt.

This is a great little gem in a sea of lackluster demos. Coltsblood are just as good as their name. Caked in filth, this lumbering behemoth shows no signs of relenting from its crushing intensity. It scrapes along the ground, never surpassing a crawl. The tone really makes this work, and funeral doom melodies really is a nice touch. Despite traces of melody, this never stops being despondent and life-draining. It truly feels like trudging through endless layers of dirt.