Toronto’s Tomb Mold got some tongues wagging late last year when their second demo, The Bottomless Perdition, garnered a great deal of notice through a strong word of mouth campaign and on Bandcamp. Blood Harvest snatched up the group, resulting in the quick release of a debut full-length album in Primordial Malignity.
Tomb Mold are sloppy, old school death metal with loud riffs, a wet sounding vocal delivery, and with pummeling percussion that varies from a mid-paced tempo to a rolling gait interspersed with a few blastbeats. The results are effective; especially when the bass is particularly loud, but Tomb Mold surprise no one with their bread and butter brand of death metal.
Tomb Mold are at their best when they’re rolling along with an up tempo delivery. Some of the slower paced moments border on becoming dirges, but a few of those moments meander and lose focus, such as in the latter half of “Coincidence of Opposites,” the second song on the album. However, these moments are few and far between on Primordial Malignity as a couple of corkers, such as the title track and the last song, “Vernal Grace – Outro,” for example, serve to flatten the listener.
Primordial Malignity consists of six songs delivered in rapid succession, and clocks in with a running time of just over a half hour. That’s the perfect length for this sort of death metal, which isn’t exactly reaching for grandiose heights in the first place. In short, Tom Mold are enjoyable enough while you’re listening to the rollicking gait, and have delivered a solid debut in Primordial Malignity. Just don’t expect the wheel to be reinvented.
(released February 4, 2017 on Blood Harvest Records)
