Following up on their 2013 release, Servants of Slow, Open Tomb lead this album with the prior one’s closing track, “Blood and Flies”, letting slow bass, dirge-like drum speeds, groaning vocals, and background sobbing set the tone for the three-track LP.  The second song, “Abandoned in a Pit” is the only entirely new track on the album, as the nineteen-minute-long closer, “Scraping Shit (From Beneath My Nails)” was originally done on OT’s 2012 Slower than Thou EP.

And, as their release titles say, Open Tomb do like to keep things slow, pulling out bass drones and riffs that go beyond gloom into tarry, oppressive atmospheres, bolstered by gurgling rasps from the vocalist.  But as much miserable weight as they successfully build over the course of the songs, with even the guitar solos emerging as murky thrashings, it occasionally feels as though the band is just killing time and waiting out the reverb.  Given that they haven’t released anything since this album, hopefully they’re taking a lengthy break to put more (tortured) life into their compositions for the comeback.