Black/Doom/Sludge trio FORGOTTEN TOMB hail from Novara, Italy, active first as a one-man project in 1999. Prolific composers, to date they have released eight full-length albums, seeing their sound progress from straight Black Metal roots to a blending of Depressive Black Metal with Sludge/Doom. They present their ninth album here, titled "We Owe You Nothing," which contains six lengthy tracks.

"We Owe You Nothing" is beefy and weighted right from the start. Early BLACK SABBATH combines with modern elements of Black Metal for a sound that is really unlike anything you may have heard before. A despondent emptiness is ever present and the riffs and drumming pound you into submission. "Second Chances" is a bit longer, but still with that lumbering pace, like a mastodon moving Atlas stones through the mud to clear his path. Agonizing vocals sound like tortured wails of the damned, charred in fire for eternity. It's so sludgy that you almost stick to it. "Saboteur" builds a bit of a frightening sound from the start with the guitars, and then settles into a psychedelic groove from there. The guitar riffs descend slowly in notes and burrow into the very earth, like a ladder that you can use to climb down to Hell.

One really can't talk about the Doom or Sludge genre without the prominent use of bass guitar. "Abandon Everything" starts with half-distorted, fuzzy bass strikes in a song with a quicker pace, where the guitars act mostly in support of the bass notes, with lead guitar notes that rise above and provide some texture to a sound that often doesn't have much of this type of thing. The opening riff in "Longing for Decay" has a chord progression that sounds like music of the Egyptian dynasty. It's the pattern of notes and the low E chord strikes at the end of two bars that really make a stamp on this sound. The bends on some of the chords almost push the breaking point of the guitar strings. The sixth and final song, "Black Overture," is much shorter than the rest, coming in at just under four minutes. It almost sounds out of place as the final track but regardless is a good moody instrumental that stays on the brighter side of some of the previous darkness for the most part.

Overall, I found the album to be in the realm of Black/Doom/Sludge as described, but perhaps a bit more on the Doom/Sludge side than Black, save for the vocals as mentioned before. It's not supposed to be exciting music in the traditional form of that word, but even with that being said, I think the album failed to make the kind of impact I was hoping for after liking the sound in the first track, because too many of the songs were too close in pace, length and style. Still, the drone that often strikes a chord with fans of this genre is present, and may be something you enjoy, so you should check it out yourself.