Metal Debate Album Review - The Coral Tombs

The Great Metal Debate Podcast

Welcome metalheads to the first album review of 2023. I'm Xander and today we are talking about the brand new album from German funeral doom metal band Ahab titled The Coral Tombs which was released on January 13th via Napalm Records. The first single for this album was "Colossus of the Liquid Graves". Napalm Records uploaded that claymation music video that gives us a motion picture glance of the album cover. The song features its familiar clean singing heard in previous records and it continues to be refreshing especially since the band's 8 year hiatus since 2015's The Boats of Glen Carrig. The main guitar riff provides us with an earworm of a winding hook. This song also brilliantly showcases the vocal talent of Sir. Daniel Droste. His slow monstrous bellows complement the atmosphere of this incredibly haunting soundtrack. The first song on the album "Prof. Arronax' Descent Into Vast Oceans" begins with a bombastic crescendo of fast, heavy and aggressive death metal only to slow down drastically into the dragging funeral doom that we all know and love. But this song has another surprise up its sleeve. The song features the German black metal band Ultha although it's not exactly clear on when they show up. If Amazon music hadn't have told me that, I would have never known and thought that it was all just Ahab. Either way, I enjoyed the song regardless. The day this album was released, the band put out their second music video titled "Mobilis In Mobili". Beginning with earth rumbling vocal delivery but during the halfway mark the sound leads into a sudden tempo change as guitarist Chris Hector gives us some soft string picking while the rest of the band comes to a screeching halt. Daniel eventually adds to Chris' picking with some quiet pitch harmonics before the drums and bass returns to pick up where they left off. This time, Daniel and drummer Cornelius Althammer both beginning their chanting style of cleans. This is a not so surprisingly great mix with the slow death metal guitar chugging slams. It works so well as the last breakdown of the song which hits us hard with the harsh vocals triumphantly concluding the track. Next we have the song "The Sea As A Desert" which has a very bizarre opening. It's difficult to describe the tuning of the guitar aside from the fact that it sounds mysterious. But it is here where I must address my first and only critique with this album. There are a lot of times throughout this record where it feels like the clean singing tends to slightly overstay it's welcome. These types of baritone operatic singing voices are great for the depressing vibe but at the same time it is only good in moderation. Unfortunately this song in particular falls flat because the majority of the song is clean singing. However, the album quickly redeems itself with the following album title track "A Coral Tomb". Easily my favorite song on this record. It would fit like a glove on this album with its slow and simple riff and 50 BPM drum speed along with the occasional crash cymbal. It's a snare and kick drum pattern that can be played on the minimalist if kits but is still quite effective. "Aegri Somnia" treats us to an acoustic guitar sound in the most dark and gloomy way possible. It takes a while for the creature-esq harsh vocals to kick in but when they do, you feel that impact reverberate through your bones. Speaking of vibrations, there are definitely some audible bass lines played by Stephan Wandernoth. The final track "The Maelstrom" features the band Esoteric. Both guest features on this album don't really make their presence that noticeable all though I could tell when they showed up for the background vocals toward this song's dreary end. So how would I rate this album? I would tell you that it is almost a masterpiece. I say almost because of my minor issues with the amount of clean singing knocks this one down a couple points. I give Ahab - The Coral Tombs a solid and well deserved 9 out of 10.