Tomb Mold - Planetary Clairvoyance

Key Facts

Country: 🇨🇦

Genre: Death Metal

Release Date: 19th July 2019

Record Label(s): 20 Buck Spin

Band Members

Derrick Vella - Bass, Guitars

Max Klebanoff - Drums, Vocals

Steve Musgrave -Bass

Payson Power - Guitars

Tomb Mold - Accelerative Phenomenae

Review

Rating (out of 5🤘): 🤘🤘🤘🤘.5

Favourite Track(s): Infinite Resurrection, Heat Death, Accelerative Phenomenae

I'm a relatively new fan of Tomb Mold and the Canadian death metallers have laid down the brutality for my wretched soul to devour. Say what you want with the friendly Canadian stereotypes because these guys are just as angry and not sorry for anything just like the rest of us. With some very traditional death metal flavours thrown into the mix accompanied by some more sludgier doom and groove style riffs. Tomb Mold unapologetically rain down the brutality with Planetary Clairvoyance and it has been a great introductory album for me!

Musically, I personally get reminded a lot of Dutch death doom legends Asphyx just with gutturals instead of the gritty scream talk thing that Martin van Drunen does (also John Tardy from Obituary does that as well now I think about it), I don't know the technical vocal term. With the transition from the fast death metal riffs to the aforementioned chunkier doom and sludgier style riffs from my point of view feels like an Asphyx influence. Perceptive influences aside, I love the composition of all the tracks on this album, they all seem very well thought out structurally and rhythmically so my head did not stop moving for the full 38 minute duration of this album. There's a really good mix of technical riffs and just straight out chugging which is refreshing as most death metal bands these days seem to be in one extreme or the other. The album has a very dark and aggressive vibe to it, every song feels like its trying to beat me into submission which is how I like my death metal records and I haven't had that feeling from a death metal record since Cannibal Corpse's Red Before Black. My favourite riff from this album comes in at roughly 3:18 in Accelerative Phenomenae, just the absolute power that that riff has really got me psyched up, I think out of all of the songs on the album  Accelerative Phenomenae is the biggest riff fest for sure. Overall, I really like the album, it's incredibly well written in my opinion, everything just flows effortlessly. Even though it is compositionally precise it doesn't back out of an experimentation or two that draws on the perceived influences that I mentioned before.

The production is what really stands out to me about this album, with death metal it has a tendency to sound really muddy and stodgy frequency wise in the low and mids. With Planetary Clairvoyance I can hear everything so clearly yet it doesn't lose any of that death metal grit. Due to the riffs coming thick and fast it can almost sound like you're listening to white noise with some death metal records. I think the clarity is down to precision guitar tones and some solid production work because I got a little excited when I first heard the album as I could hear every not. The drums however for me have moved away from the traditional clicky death metal kick and snare. The only way I could describe it is if you have listened to any DOWN or Crowbar records, it has this real NOLA feel for me anyway and because of that it really adds an extra layer of beef under the riffs. Overall, the album sounds huge and heavy from a production standpoint and I'm living for it.

Definitely an album to check out of you haven't heard of Tomb Mold. Brutally heavy and plenty of blast beats for you to smash the hell out of your ear drums with. 

Tomb Mold - Planetary Clairvoyance