Womb 11 — (-)

(-) is the six-track debut album from doomy and necro-focused industrial project Womb 11. The project is a Russian one-man venture, and it’s certainly fair to say this grim and bleakly droning trip- with zero sonic light or hope.

The release appears on Germanys Dunkelheit Produktionen- as either a CD, Vinyl LP, or digital download- I’m reviewing the first of these. The CD comes presented in a jewel case, this features monochrome cover art- taking in a human skull with a curved ritual knife, and a murky picture of a fenced-off grave with an iron cross in it.

The album's six tracks have runtimes between one and nearing thirteen minutes- and the whole album follows a fairly sonically similar grim & sparse sound path, with the same sort of sound pallet throughout. We go from the gloomy synth bass hover & revolving scaping of “Hearken From Ancient Female Skull” which as it progresses adds in pressing and sinister electro tone detail to the mix. We have tolling church bells, shovelling tones, electro tone squiggles,  wavering bass purr and minimal monk vocalising of “Metamorphosis Of Elements (The Collapse Of Seraphims)” which sounds like a murkily dreamy and prime evil take on raison d'être. Or the twelve-minute thirty of the title track- which finds bluntly purring electro hover, tolling tone glumness, and eerier junk manipulation- with bleakly build feedback simmers coming to the fore later.
 
As an album (-) certainly creates a pressingly gloomily, and death-hazed industrial ambience. I enjoy the whole grim ebb and simmer of the album, though moving forward it would be nice to see Womb 11 expanding his sound pallet a little.