Tomb Mold - "Primordial Malignity" (Blood Harvest, 2017)

Band: Tomb Mold
Title: Primordial Malignity
Genre: Death Metal
Year: 3rd February 2017
Time: 32 min
Rating: 88/100













Tomb Mold is an incredible band! As said by them, the initial goal of Tomb Mold was only to release some demotapes and nothing more. But, after the success found by their two 2016 demos (especially "The Bottomless Perdition"), their label Blood Harvest asked to them if they were ready for a debut album. So, these two Canadians guys from Toronto realized some months ago that debut album naming it "Primordial Malignity". The result of all these efforts is a crushing album able to show again the excellent qualities shown in the recent past by Tomb Mold for a very promising future.

Without wasting too time for the introductions, "Primordial Malignity" is an album very pleasurable to listen to also because it lasts only 32 minutes (per 8 songs) where are expressed many and effective ideas in the spirit of a pure death metal. More specifically, Tomb Mold plays a death metal with a very strong Finnish vibe so to remind bands like Abhorrence, Demilich or Demigod but showing, at the same time, a good personality given by the creativity of Derrick Vella and Max Klebanoff.

The first one is a drummer with a various and unpredictable style proposing also a notable balancement between the fast and the slower parts, with these last ones that are enough frequent in order to let to the music of Tomb Mold to offer moments of great atmosphere emphasized very much by the riffing of Max. In addition of this, the fast parts are rarely in the blast-beats, and, in fact, this is present only in 3 songs, that are "They Grow Inside" (this one is opened by a very blasting part after an intro full of desolation), the titletrack and "Twisted Trial". And there is need to say that Derrick is one of the very few singers/drummers of the entire metal scene, spewing forth a stinking plethora of putrescent growls.

Instead, Max Klebanoff crush the listeners with riffs that are often impregnated of an hallucinating wickedness, and some of them give to me a sensation of a malefic imponence almost like if Max would evoke gigantic and apocalyptic horrors through these riffs, as in "Merciless Watcher" and, especially, in "Vernal Grace". Then, the lead guitar has a good role so to increase the sinister and atmospheric aura of the music also due to solos that can be tremendously hallucinated (in this sense, the one of "Twisted Trial" is fantastic!) while some of them are swollen with melancholic melodies ("Vernal Grace", for example).

The variety of the tracklist is remarkable. In fact, the album range from "Coincidence of Opposites" (that contains some even groovy tempos) to the very well structured "Twisted Trial" (maybe the most complex song of the entire album because it is able to grind the listeners with blast-beats but also to drain their souls through abyssic doom tempos). Or from "Merciless Watcher" (an all mid/slow track until to be in a crepuscular and doomish finale) to "Clockwise Metamorphosis" (that is, instead, the most violent song of "Primordial Malignity", especially during its hammering first part). And all this, passing also though the thrashy moments of the short titletrack, ends with "Vernal Grace", that is mastodontic and frightful during its first part but slow and melancholic during its second one before an apocalyptic and no hope outro which is a kind of extension of the intro preceding the opening track "They Grow Inside".

The incredible thing is that the Canadians Tomb Mold seem to be totally Finnish because of their very sinister death metal characterized by some funereal melodic moments, emphasing the entire music with a dark production. At the same time, we are talking about excellently well composed and arranged songs full of very wicked and inspired riffs. But, paradoxically, the only flaw of the album that I found there is into the conclusive "Vernal Grace" since it contains riffs so evil to undermine a little the second one, that is saved fortunately by a strongly evocative finale. Now, I don't know what Tomb Mold are doing but I read that they had the idea to put on a true line-up for possible live gigs. So, I hope that they have realized this idea because their death metal deserve entirely to be played on a stage!

Tracklist:

1 - Intro/They Grow Inside
2 - Coincidence of Opposites
3 - Bereavement of Flesh
4 - Primordial Malignity
5 - Merciless Watcher
6 - Clockwork Metamorphosis
7 - Twisted Trial
8 - Vernal Grace/Outro

Line-up:

Derrick Vella - vocals/drums
Max Klebanoff - guitars/bass

BandCamp: https://tombmold.bandcamp.com/releases
Blood Harvest: http://www.bloodharvest.se/