by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
Figuratively, life around us has been rotting for some time, and while decay of our natural world looms on the minds of many, Toronto’s Tomb Mold have been looking toward other galaxies, their world of wretched death metal unconfined to this realm. Their sound honors the timeless traditions of the genre’s past, rooted in old school death metal, but not defined by it. Tomb Mold have pushed their boundaries since their formation, and with The Enduring Spirit, they’ve decimated form in favor of exploration, from caustic prog to jazzy psych expanses, and dare we say they’ve done it without alienating metal purists. Their latest album favors an open mind, a collision of primal force and deranged technicality, moments of sheer carnage and (relative) tranquil calm. Tomb Mold favor dynamics to caveman density, remaining cosmically brutal and unpredictably ravenous.
While death metal has been steadily annihilating speakers since the days of Death, Morbid Angel, Possessed, and Bolt Thrower, it’s safe to say that the past decade has become a renaissance for the sound, with a few bands even making the improbable leap into mainstream music culture. While some folks will forever be adverse to the sound (you won’t catch my mother-in-law listening to Witch Vomit), the genre’s expansion and willingness to devour unlikely elements has turned a new generation of listeners toward metal, cemented by bands like Blood Incantation, Gatecreeper, Caustic Wound, Hyperdontia, Malignant Alter, Necrot, Faceless Burial, and of course, Tomb Mold. They’ve opened the portal for a weird world of forward thinking music fans, a community that wants something raw and pulverizing, but also something more than just raw and pulverizing. Tomb Mold rely on oozing sonic assault and celestial filth, but their amorphous structures move without the steadfast genre guidelines, opting to complicate structures rather than appease the masses... and it works wonders. Audiences are along for the decent into the depths because for every scourge of fury and each decrepit window to our own annihilation, the voyage is nothing short of exhilarating. It’s a kick in the teeth to the bland and boring, it’s radiant technicality with taste.
Considering the fact that Tomb Mold became a well-deserved fixture among modern death metal luminaries, they’ve been somewhat absent since laying their particular monolithic framework. Since the release of 2019’s Planetary Clairvoyance, a tremor inducing modern classic, they’ve been relatively quiet, aside from last year’s self-released Aperture of Body EP. While the trio worked on other projects, Tomb Mold was festering in the dark, waiting patiently as catastrophe made a presence worldwide. Those four year’s did nothing to dull their edges though, The Enduring Spirit endures indeed, a sinewy metal album that feels fully realized, intricately constructed, and deliberately paced. The hills may have eyes, but there’s nuance in them hills. Announced and released the same week via 20 Buck Spin (Ruin Lust, Gravesend, Fugitive), the record’s themes seem to deal with the last chaotic spiral of humanity before the brink of collapse, the world scrambling as we’re shaken from our axis, with destruction seemingly inevitable. It’s a challenge to find what scraps of spiritual enlightenment can be gleamed when doom reigns supreme.
If four years has felt like an eternity (especially these four years), Tomb Mold draw us back in with unprecedented immediacy, “The Perfect Memory (Phantasm of Aura)” opening with a stampeding and disjointed blast of obliterating drum fills and a sinister riff that spiders like cracked glass. The band weave knots in their composition, deconstruction matched with brainy complexity, as we’re pulled into their spiral, the riffs and rhythms continuously shifting, reshaping, and regenerating with malicious intensity. It doesn’t necessarily sound quite as “evil” as past recordings, but Tomb Mold’s cavernous heft remains immovable nonetheless. There’s a steady decimation that whips through “Angelic Fabrications,” a song that deals with the distortion of faith and reality. The band dig into the subterranean, the sludge riff pushed and pulled as bile emanates the path, with tempos bludgeoned and changing rapidly. Tomb Mold drop in and out, highlighting the dexterity of the song while staying engaging in the brute force. From there The Enduring Spirit continues its evolution, as “Will of Whispers” embraces jazz-inspired psych rock textures, folding them into the carnage, the rubble and wreckage bolstered by a sense of the magnificent and the reflective. The riffs convulse between soaring leads and darting exploration, taking a moment away from the stale atmosphere of doom and gloom to breathe fresh air.
The respite is only temporary and Tomb Mold always opt to make the most of their uncompromising intensity. “Fate’s Tangled Thread” plays out like a reflection after the void, unaware of how it all came to end, left to sputter into the ether of the unknown. It stomps and grooves with gargantuan momentum, but there’s space in the composition, subtle changes that become striking in their subversion of the gluey stampede. It’s another spiral that opens like a black hole, torn in the fabric of the song, warped into unexpected progressive territory. The trio seem entirely aware when they’ve veered outside the borders of death metal, and they often answer with skull crushing classicism, like the volatile “Flesh as Amour” or the dizzyingly technical brilliance of “Servants of Possibility.”
This all leads to “The Enduring Spirit of Calamity,” the nearly twelve minute finale, a song that storms through dust and destruction, a removal from space and time to something eternal, an endless quest where realization feels just beyond reach. The song tears through compacted fills, epic prog-fantasy riffs, and plenty of unabashed head slamming dirges, but whenever there’s a sense that the structure might settle, Tomb Mold quickly open the floodgates, lurching from one movement to the next, each building on what came before and what may never be. Then it all disappears, the song’s aggression and impenetrable wall of noise gives way to something serene yet disarming, a final moment of clarity before complete disintigration. The Enduring Spirit feels like a cataclysmic event, and while first impressions (or sixth or seventh impressions, depending on how many times you’ve listened so far) can feel so important, there’s a veritable onslaught to take in, rewarding a deeper connection, guttural disgust, cosmic evaporation, and all that lies between.