Can someone play with unprecedented heaviness without saturating the listener’s ability to assimilate after only a few minutes? In this not-so-simple feat 71TonMan once again succeed with their third full length in their 10-year career, entitled Of End Times. It’s been six years since the excellent Eartwreck, a silence interrupted only with the ep War Is Peace // Peace Is Slavery in 2021, but the Polish band resumes the discourse with extreme fluidity as if it had been interrupted only a few months ago; the sludge doom on offer holds true to the imagery aroused by the monicker but, compared to other leading acts in the sector, e.g. Primitive Man, the pace is imperceptibly less asphyxiating and endowed with a melodic idea even if it is heavily buried under the 71 tons of mud. Personally, I think that too much sludge played today is nothing more than a display of power for its own sake, but this is not the case with 71TonMan who, for forty minutes, manage to keep the tension high, and perhaps it is no coincidence that this operation seems to succeed better with European bands rather than with those overseas, who actually invented these sounds. Of End Times is a work of high specific weight, from whatever point of view one wishes to examine it.
2023 – Transcending Obscurity Records
Mournful Sounds 
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