Rebuilt after having spent a handful of years reconnoitering all paths forward Portland, Oregon-based doom metal quintet TAR PIT arrive upon their own morbid fascination as they celebrate their tenth year of existence with a new-found sophomore full-length album. Sporting a balance of both distantly cast sorcery and intimate incantation ‘Scrying the Angel Gate‘ sloughs off their stoney and sludged musings for the sake of connective focus herein, a more traditional doom metal instance with its own eerie presence. The result is yet afflicted with an unnamable eldritch madness, a tormented and meandering set of fixations wielded in service to ancient and unknowable forces from beyond.

Tar Pit blossomed from the mud circa 2014 via vocalist Mat Ortega and a lineup consisting of folks who’d later move on to death metal band Coffin Rot among other projects. Their initial efforts produced a bluesy, buried doom metal demo (‘Tar Pit‘, 2017) with some stoner metal movement in hand. It’d been a solid set of songs but the unique face of the band would arrive more completely within their debut LP (‘Tomb of Doom‘, 2019) where traditional doom, stoner metal and sludge all stewed into a murky but memorable enough release. Guitarist Stephen Hoffman, who’d joined after the demo, stuck around beyond that point but since then they’ve added three new folks including one of the fellowes from Purification. They’ve taken a general but no complete turn toward classics-inspired sounds for this new record.

On ‘Scrying the Angel Gate‘ Tar Pit move beyond general sludge/doom tropes slung together along a blues rock backbone and now get a bit more weird with it, stretching the bounds of traditional doom metal a bit looser than one’d expect while showcasing some admirable tonal variety. To start the three part “Dagon, Dark Lord Dwelling Beneath” introduces a low n’ slow simmering psychedelic doom creep, something akin to the first Electric Wizard record per its searching pulse. As an opener it is curious as Hell, a long multi-part piece which relies upon the tension of restraint… to the point that it almost appears sung through their teeth as it rolls on. As their ancient madness rises slowly from the deep “Coven Vespers” pivots to something like ‘Hallow’s Victim‘-level street doom, jogging through their summon of Fuzz (R.I.P.) for an apropos guest spot. — If those first ~fourteen or so minutes were your only sample of this record you’d have an offset idea of what this record is all about as there is only the one song a la “Coven Vespers” here. The rest of the album is generally indebted to 80’s doom metal traditions, includes some spaced post-millennial hindsight, and makes feature of the band’s own sense for horrified scene-setting.

The heavy blues girded, kinda grunge-era feeling groan of “Jubilee” beside the long strange trip of “Blue Light Cemetery” bears some of the original soul of Tar Pit, or, at least revisits the pocket where the vocalist is most comfortably set though this time he isn’t so set aback in the distance. We’re kind of in that early 90’s underground, Rise Above territory with the latter piece in that it takes some interesting turns though it isn’t truly soul-flattening stuff. There are increasingly sour, deeper-searching pieces set further down the road on the final third of the LP and I suppose the real cut-to-the-bone “epic” doom metal adjacent stuff comes via “Blessed King of Longing” while the title track/closer (“Scrying the Angel Gate”) reprises the long-winded tension of the opener to some degree. The full listen all gels together as a moody mash of old and new doom metal sounds set askew of expectations with the band making their most interesting strides within longer pieces.

As I go down my list of grievances they’re all pretty minor here, production values and aesthetics are class overall: The rhythm section sounds ancient enough though the bass guitar tone could use a hit of grime when it crops up in feature. The gate depicted on the cover has a sort of AI or filter heavy upscaled look to it which reads as slop up close, it works but would look better hand illustrated. Sound design here is appropriately split between the eras previously suggested and this suits the group’s not-so-extreme and generally intimate style with an “underground” trenched feel sans any too out-there idiosyncrasy in mind. All in all the choice to stray from sludge/stoner sounds has helped Tar Pit to stand out in the doom metal headspace without making any wildly jarring moves away from their general impetus, you’ll still recognize them but this is clearly a more inventive and weirding version of the band. A moderately high recommendation.

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