Scorching Tomb – Ossuary
Release Date: 24th October 2025
Label: Time to Kill Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal
FFO: Morbid Angel, Bolt Thrower, Severe Torture, Obituary, Suffocation.
Review By: Malte Brigge
September and October were pretty loaded months for we happy few in the metal world, and there’s still more to come. That takes a toll on the lowly reviewer. I’m still in remission from Gorleben, and with Quixkuor on the horizon and my birthday last Saturday, I knew I just needed a fat debut o’ knuckle-draggin’ caveman death metal to scrub my brain free of anything resembling thinking for a minute. Enter Montreal’s tattoo artists-turned-Scorching Tomb, whose members have less than one cumulative line of “See also” on Metallum and have released exactly one demo, one EP, one split and now their first full-length, Ossuary. Is it the simple kick directly to the brain I was hoping for?
Ask and ye shall receive, oh flagellant. Press play on Ossuary and get roundhoused with Stalagmite Impalement’s infectious opening riff. My continued reflex is to sit straight up with saucer-wide eyes and shout, “Bolt Thrower!” It’s all riff ‘n’ disembowelment. There’s so much kick drum I thought at first it got buried in the mix, but nope, it’s just a wall of kick. Émile Savard taps that ride bell with finesse as much as he pounds the shit out of his toms. Miguel Lepage glues it all together with thick-as-a-cement-truck low end and uses Skullcrush to stomp waffle prints into your face. His tone is so fucking fat even the most vindictive producer couldn’t hide it. There are no soft or pretty parts to distract you, so don’t worry about your death metal getting all fluffy. Songs are short, and for Scorching Tomb, the shorter, the better. Feel the Blade and Bloodlust Sacrifice creep past the four-minute mark, but probably shouldn’t. Lacking solos, shifts and modulations, there’s little to fill the extra time meaningfully; if you’re watching the clock, the songs start to drag a bit. It’s just stacks o’ riffs and verse-chorus-beatdown repetition.
Vincent Patrick Lajeunesse’s vocals are ripe for thirty minutes of skull-smashing thuggery. He’s got dry rot growls, demonic yowls, and plenty of blleeuurrghghyyoowww! Lyrics are mostly stretched songtitles repeated: “Skuuuuuuulllll!!! Cruuuuuuuush!!!”; “Sanctuuuuuuum!!! Of!!! Booooooooones!!!”; and who could forget, “Senteeeeeeenced!!! To rot!!!” He makes sure you never, not for a second, have to think. It’s easy to grunt along, if not to his poetry then to Philippe Leblanc’s riffs (“Duh duh duh walalala walaala walalal” [Sentenced to Rot] and “Bu deedodedee do – duh – duh-duh-duh” [Feel the Blade]). Leblanc’s triplet firings and open E chugs, like that bow saw in your garage, are intentionally dulled so it hurts more when they cut. Occasional scrapes and pinched squealies add some axe-blade texture, and these axes ain’t for choppin’ trees.
If Scorching Tomb had dropped Ossuary in 1993, it might be held in high regard today. Alas, it’s 2025. What makes Ossuary a fun listen also makes it a forgettable one. The opening riff is memorable not just because it hooks in all the right places, but because it sounds so much like Bolt Thrower. There’s a healthy blend of Obituary and Morbid Angel throughout Ossuary, too, but no barbs to keep the hooks in. Everything about it is good enough, but little stands out that gives the album or band any sense of identity. It’s actually hard to write about Ossuary when not actively listening to it because there aren’t many details to grasp. It gets in, busts heads, flees, and you struggle to describe the perpetrators to the investigators. It plays better when you don’t really pay attention to it—which, to be fair, is what I was looking for: an album that exceeds zero expectations. It’s the sonic equivalent of your hairy knuckles scraping your cave’s bone-littered floor as you scrounge some gristle to gnaw for breakfast. That’s what I wanted; that’s what I got. Still, I wouldn’t mind if I could retain some memory of it beyond one riff and rad cover art.
Scorching Tomb will be a good band to see on the festival circuit. That said, they could be the reason you decide to take a break from all your jumping around to check out the merch stand or get a hot dog. It’s great for that—staying near the music while being otherwise engaged. Ossuary is riff-ripping mortar fire that never lets you forget, at any moment, that this is, and was always meant to be, as straightforward a death metal album as they come. It’s good enough for what it does, but lacks the power needed to be more than a good enough background.
(2.5 / 5)
