Primordial Malignity

There has always been a sense of commonality between the New York death metal scene and the somewhat less prolific yet equally vile one existing in the great white north. One can't help but reminisce upon the greater sense of brutality and technical wizardry that was ushered into the style thanks to the early works of Suffocation that were ratcheted up even further by the exploits of their even more otherworldly Canadian foils Cryptopsy. In more recent times the similar stylistic inclinations of both sides has remained constant, and the recent entry of a young act out of Toronto in Tomb Mold has served to underscore this fact something fierce. Drawing heavily from the muddy, rain-drenched auditory cemetery that is New York's low-fi corpse-mongers Incantation, this is a band that doesn't pull their necrotic punches. Curiously enough, they also prove to be quite effective in the independent, small label context into which their debut onslaught Primordial Malignity finds itself, as the Swedish distributor in question Blood Harvest has been quite prolific in serving up extreme metal newcomers to the market.

Naturally as with any newer band that is technically reaffirming an existing musical tradition within a revivalist context, Tomb Mold isn't quite a full on carbon copy of the peculiar sound exhibited in their New York forerunners. The same sort of fuzz-steeped, low-end darkness that permeated Incantations early works and was continued via Craig Pillard's more recent band Disma is on full display here, complete with the heavily present and distorted bass sound that shares equal prominence with the down-tuned guitars. However, the execution has a bit more of an early 90s Swedish flavor to it, listening close to how something by Entombed (prior to Wolverine Blues) or Dismember might have sounded when played through the template of a dank, New York production. There are also some fairly noticeable traces of early Cannibal Corpse influences spread about, largely in the vocal work of Max Kelbanoff, which functions as a sort of deeper and more gurgling variant on a vintage Chris Barnes grunt, something that contrasts with his more straight-lined, thrashing drum work.

It is actually rather fitting that these songs are the product of a two-person band, as they exude a sort of rustic, working-class quality to them that further distinguishes things from the throngs of Florida scene emulators that have been cropping up for the past decade. Apart from the creepy ambient intro and outro that rounds out this half hour of unrelenting brutality, the presentation is quite straightforward. Dissonant, rhythmically obscured crushers like "They Grow Inside", "Primordial Malignity" and "Merciless Watcher" are fairly busy both from a standpoint of riff work and progression, yet retain a sense of symmetry and predictability that makes them easy to follow and also betrays a greater affinity for the thrashing simplicity of the Stockholm scene. More straight up slabs of auditory barbarism such as "Coincidence Of Opposites" and "Clockwise Metamorphosis" take this tendency to a more overt place, occasionally flirting with full blown death/thrash territory and all but reaching back into the late 80s. Likewise, though heavily obscured by the production quality, Derrick Vella's lead guitar work could almost pass for slightly sloppier answer to Schuldiner's handiwork on Leprosy.

If nothing else, this is a band that lives up to its name, as the stench of filth and decay befitting a cemetery with tomb stones steeped in mold due to the dank conditions is an apt description of how this album sounds. Despite being released in 2017 and featuring album art that could almost be mistaken for something a modern blackened death outfit would sport, this is about as overt of a stylistic throwback to the mid-90s New York sound as one could get, albeit one splashed heavily with concurrent Swedish and some Florida elements from a couple years prior. The result is an album that is both familiar yet also possessed of a freshness that will undoubtedly play quite well to younger fans of old school death metal who want to mix things up a bit following a binge of cleaner, early 90s death metal imitators like Morfin and Rude. It's a bit rough around the edges and has more of an amateur flavor that is in line with a band that is just starting to get their bearings, but it's an excellent debut by a band that has expanded and kept themselves quite busy in the studio up until the present.