The shoe has dropped, the collapse of the natural world and civilization having been less than grand and moreso guttural in its flailing heave unto death, and yet the stamp it leaves on humanity’s neck is profoundly concentric. As it turns out the pre-apocalypse and the post-apocalypse look much the same beyond all the disintegrating corpses left behind as Liverpool, England-based funeral death doom/sludge metal trio COLTSBLOOD depict the finale of life on earth both in motion and fully arrived on this third and heaviest full-length album. ‘Obscured into Nebulous Dusk‘ is a far deeper step down into funeral death/doom metal tonality, still a thunder-carved sludge/doom metal band with extreme metal tastes but one who fully dive into atmospheric dithering of funeral-apropos sounds. While it won’t alienate fans of their previous work in any sense this is a band who’ve sharpened their general preparedness, performance and presentation to a fresh high this third time around.

Coltsblood formed circa 2010 by way of vocalist, bassist and sometimes drummer John McNulty (ex-Conan) and guitarist Jem McNulty as they’d explored songwriting together, honing in on the darker spectrum of sludge metal for a couple years. The ethos of the band appears to have been centered around working within their means, developing organically and playing heavy and slow with (initial) inspiration drawn from earliest death/doom, funeral doom, psychedelic doom and black metal. It’d made for plenty of guitar feedback and slowly mazed-through riffs on their debut demo (‘Beyond the Lake of Madness‘, 2013), far more of a sludge metal specific feel which defines their early work. They’d naturally completed the thought beyond the demos with a full-length album, expanding their scope for a (reportedly) rushed recording session yet the result was satisfyingly straight-forward, a focused debut (‘Into the Unfathomable Abyss‘, 2014) and a pretty solid place to plant their first solid grounding. That’d been the Mark I formation of the group as their original drummer (Steve Primeau) lived a bit too far away and since 2014 drummer Jay Plested (Black Magician) has been thronemeister.

The early history of Coltsblood is solid but will immediately feel formative as Plested‘s style suited the bands interest in black, death and funeral doom. You can hear it immediately as you tuck into the pretty damned mandatory gnarl of their sophomore LP (‘Ascending Into Shimmering Darkness‘, 2017) which I’d described as something like “Doom Snake Cult does early 2000’s funeral doom” at the time. The important note to make here on my part is that that record is underrated, heavy as shit and more-or-less packed with doom metal riffcraft old-and-new which was no longer quite so centered around sludge metal so much as funeral death/doom’s surreal and deliberate tonality at a mid-pace (see: Lycus, Un, Aldebaran). The last piece of the puzzle leading up to this long-awaited third LP is a 12″ split with Un where the band’s song “Snows of the Winter Realm” flexed that funeral sludge muscle more than ever, easily one of their best songs to date as a 20+ minute funereal diorama.

That split LP track appeared to have been a new directive for the band, a refinement of extremes which’d then received a few years consideration and development wherein Coltsblood turned deeper into the soil of those darker atmospheric climes, honing the miserable bliss of their craft ’til ‘Obscured Into Nebulous Dusk‘ was readied and recorded circa 2022. While it would’ve been fair to consider the previous record an amalgam of sorts here all hangs under the glowing-black shroud of Finnish funeral doom ideation, still touching upon sludge metal’s hairiest aggression and eating the blackened death metal reap of the riff yet replacing ye olde tripped psychedelic doom meander found on ‘Ascending Into Shimmering Darkness‘ with more lead-driven wane overall. Obscure as that might sound upon introduction in practicum this is a sound that fans of Tyranny, Evoken and even Coffins should appreciate on some level. That said, it might take the full ~43 minutes and a long, glorious hike toward the title track/finale (“Obscured into Nebulous Dusk”) to become fully enrobed in this description as this experience comes together with patience and resounds more with each pass through.

With guitar feedback left freely ringing out atop the apocalyptic wasteland of the present day album opener “Until the Eidolon Falls” leads with a crumbling, semi-distorted bass guitar tone playing a doom metal riff void of resolve, circling in its line as atmospheric leads and ringing swells siren throughout our introduction. The leads which form their first shapes from this sonic birth almost immediately signal a funeral doom metal voice, yearning yet reticent with its melodic phrase. This style of lead guitar driven piece should invoke some response within a more dedicated Evoken fan at the very least and that’d been the first claw to grasp my nape in a serious manner on the walk through. The riffs eventually hit, the guttural growls from McNulty hit, and their machine is even more of a beast when all gore-cylinders are engaged but I couldn’t help but appreciate the skillful flexing of Plested on this song and all of the wild fills and quasi-solo moments they’ve fit in. While it might seem like just another thunder-toned n’ shuffling extreme doom nod this opener is not-so average once you’ve locked into the performances involved and soaked up as much radiation as possible from the wall of guitar feedback which wails throughout.

With only four ~10 minute songs to consider between its two halves clear distinction between each song might be more of a consideration were this not an extreme doom metal record, the sort of work which benefits from contiguously strung forms and outsized atmospheric headspace. Coltsblood once again worked with some of the best between engineering/mixing from Chris Fielding @ Foel Studio and mastering via Greg Chandler at Priory Recording Studio repeating the configuration utilized on the previous album, though they’ve made more room for heavier, more immediately struck movements such as that which greets us via “Waning of the Wolf Moon”. Guttural and grizzled, snaking out beyond the milling throb of its verse riffs and managing a doom-blasted and blackened stretch beyond ~1:38 minutes in… the band’s action is at its most heated point of pace within this second piece. There we get all of their strange magickry decongesting at once and a wailing wall of guitar feedback to fall back on, a song which speaks of despair and frustration in its meditation upon extinction, endangerment and ultimately points to the interconnectedness of nature as one crucial domino falls at their feet.

Any given moment where I’d been taken by a distraction from the duration of ‘Obscured into Nebulous Dusk‘ found it rolled deep into the background and what I mean by that is Coltsblood‘s work truly benefits from the ear hanging on every note. Because these longform pieces do not deal in broader shaped forms in a tuneful way they’re rarely gripping for one riff or another but rather how they build, flow, and reach shimmering points of ecstatic darkness. The ghostly hang of “Transcending the Immortal Gateway” in particular floats past when given due patience, taken in as an atmospheric death/doom metal piece. What saves this from being a collage of unearthly surreal sounds comes with the direction offered by the funeral death/doom apropos lead guitars, which are the major boon of this record’s voicing overall, and of course the vocals which are particularly effective on this piece as they intensify. And again, if you’d not gotten the gist of where they were coming from based on their previous two releases the title track/closer (and my personal favorite piece on the album) with its inclusion of organ-toned keys help to make it most clear. Likewise the clean(er) vocals on the finale are probably the best point saved for last, it gives some extra point of devastation to that endpoint.

At the end of the day ‘Obscured into Nebulous Dusk‘ is more memorable for what it does with the ten-minute extreme metal song format than any one phrase, riff, or piece over another. That isn’t to say that it is forgettable but instead faithful to the major efficacy of this rare type of lead-driven funeral doom expression, this is the major point of my own fandom stoked throughout the full listen. Not only have they continued down the line with this whole idea, which’d been well enough their own sound on the previous record, but they’re doing more with it and achieving a listening experience which is bigger and more impactful overall. That’d be the biggest point to make here on my part, that Coltsblood‘ve nailed the -feeling- of doom and devastation under their own dramatization to great effect and it makes this record easy to return to that the leaves of the experience all fall within the same deeply immersive realm. Production values are high, the layout is particularly fitting, and I figure this’ll all click with fans of heavier atmosphere no matter their concern for sub-genre niche and such. A high recommendation.

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