Grave In The Sky — Cutlery Hits China

Grave In The Sky(not to be confused with the now defunct sludge doom merchants Grave At Sea) are an Israel based three piece who brew up a often nasty sounding mixture of : industrial, doom, , soundtrack elements, some slight experimental guitar texturing & the odd noise rise.

This is the bands debut album & it offers up five(mainly) extreme film based/themed tracks with the following movies covered with a track each: Donnie Darko, The Descent, Straw Dogs & The Devil's Rejects with the last track seemingly shifting away from the film theme & just been called Scum.  Each track follows a similar sonic patten & make-up with the track been built around low-slung doomed guitar riffs & grim bass lines, pounding doom &  industrial drums, guttural & often effect echoed, bounced & bugged with vocals and the odd hint of analogue electronics. For me the albums most rewarding when they turn down the intensity(and effects peddles!) for more atmospheric & synth layered moments like the Straw Dogs track that has this nice eerier, thick & nasty analogue synth line running through most of the track- there’s also a few nicely placed sampled panic screams in the mix too on this track.

All told not a bad little debut album if you dig the doom & industrial mix; I just wish they’d stretched the sound a bit more & looked further into their atmospheric/cinematic side- anyway  I’ll certainly be interested to hear what they do in the future.