This album is actually kind of amusing, I ran across a short review I wrote of it in my email from right around 2009. In that writing I thought that the black metal sections were phenomenal, but the ambient sections were lacking. I went into listening to White Tomb for the first time in a long while with that in mind... and I'm very happy to say I was wrong.
I do have to double down on my statement that the black metal sections are excellent. The song Earth is perhaps the finest example of how you combine post rock with black metal that I've ever heard. The entire song is one long blast beat but slowly builds and builds and builds... and FUCKING BUILDS until this insane tremolo picked explosion in the middle of the song that still gives me goosebumps to this day.
Through The Collapse is a bit tougher of a song to instantly enjoy. I don't particularly care for the vocals in part 1: Watchers Restrained, but whereas before I did not like the ambience of this part of the album, now I think it's one of the better moments. The song uses silence and slow builds as weapons to lure the listener into a sense of security. The ambience reminds me heavily of a decaying dystopia and as the music continues to deconstruct itself this image becomes clearer and clearer. As a concept Through the Collapse is the superior song on this album.
This is driven home on the second part, Gentian Truth. This may as well be a post rock song all together with its build. It's not as huge of an explosion as Earth is, but god damn these guys know how to tell as story though just a song title and music. Through the Collapse feels exactly like that: we witness the destruction of Earth and somehow survive to move forward to a new day.
What a fucking debut album this my dude. I don't think I knew how incredible this was when I first listened, but now I can say that this is a rare gem.
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