Sea Of Bones – The Earth Wants Us Dead (seaofbones.bandcamp.com)
Those of us who have been following Sea Of Bones for a while now could be tempted to give in to frustration at the infrequency of their activity. They seemed to have a good head of steam at the start until a van accident ended one of their tours (though mercifully nothing worse). Since then there have been occasional spurts of activity, but no documentation of their crushing output has been forthcoming since their 2007 album The Harvest.
Sea Of Bones – The Earth Wants Us Dead (seaofbones.bandcamp.com)
Those of us who have been following Sea Of Bones for a while now could be tempted to give in to frustration at the infrequency of their activity. They seemed to have a good head of steam at the start until a van accident ended one of their tours (though mercifully nothing worse). Since then there have been occasional spurts of activity, but no documentation of their crushing output has been forthcoming since their 2007 album The Harvest. And while those lucky enough to have seen them in the ensuing years may have wished some new recording would be cast into the world sooner, the band’s newest record demonstrates that the six years since their first album were well-spent, and that the wait was decidedly worth it.
Most assessments of Sea Of Bones’ music place it firmly in the stoner/doom side of metal, which isn’t hard to do, considering the bands with whom they normally play and the sludginess of their output. But it is hardly the whole picture. Their older material wasn’t a million miles removed from Corrupted or Burning Witch, and even then, bore nothing in common with the glut of nu-doom tryhards regurgitating castoff Electric Wizard riffs and worrying more about having the right Orange amp than actually writing a decent song, which have overrun the genre in recent years. Their new work often ends up closer to the downtuned, half-speed hardcore of Dystopia or Ire, though like those bands, it rarely indulges in anything that’s overly comparable to anything else. And while they largely stick to tuning low and playing slow, there is a palpable rage to The Earth Wants Us Dead, a vicious intensity that straight doom metal rarely displays.
That said, the album is hardly the one-dimensional monotone that it could have been in less-experienced hands. For all the crushing heaviness, there are moments of mournful tranquility that lend the material a sense of nuance. Some of these – the first few moments of the album’s latter two songs, for instance – intermingle with the louder sections, complementing and contrasting them. Some, like the separate ambient piece bearing the album’s title, stand alone. Their unsettling atmospheric tendencies do not necessarily contrast the band’s more aggressive side, but certainly suggest some different shade of darkness, one that’s no less crushing for its overall lack of distortion.
What Sea Of Bones have achieved with The Earth Wants Us Dead isn’t solely the quality of the music contained theirin (though they’ve set the bar high) or the length of time anybody following them has had to wait to hear it (and it’s been quite a while), but rather the example that it sets for anybody attempting this sort of music. Rather than stock riffs and recycled imagery, the band has delivered a deeply personal and violently passionate channeling of bleakness and negativity into a compelling and cathartic whole. There are a good number of bands that make heavy music better, but Sea Of Bones are something more – the kind of band that this genre genuinely and desperately needs.
