As soon as I heard the opening riff of Tomb Mold's latest album, The Enduring Spirit, I knew I was in for a treat. This Toronto-based death metal band has always impressed me with their ability to create unrelenting and sinister meatbag songs that make my head bang and my mind race. This time, the music explores Death Metal Boundaries while vocalist Max Klebanoff gazes within his own mind body and soul.
From start to finish, this album is a masterclass in brutal death metal. The guitars are just fucking heavy, the skins are thunderous and precise, while the vocals are downright terrifying. But what really sets this album suprisingly apart is its unbridled attack on faith and the ability to be honest about ones worldview.
That's right, Tomb Mold has taken the nihilistic, misanthropic ethos of death metal and infused it with a message of questioning faith and ones own world view. Songs like "Angelic Fabrications" and "The Perfect Memory (The Phantasm of Aura)" question the integrity of spirituality and spit fire about the hypocrisy, while also questioning everything.
This may sound lame but it works. The juxtaposition of Tomb Mold's ferocious music with their introspective lyrics creates a powerful emotional effect that is hard to deny. I found myself headbanging and barking along to lines like:
"Absolution - the fateful pillar of reprieve
Threadbare faith in the cult of seven angels
Life free from illusion in the gallery for the angеlic conversation
Bound to be lashed by thе great white light
The stench of enlightenment degenerates my cells"
That's not to say that The Enduring Spirit is without its flaws. At times, the album feels a bit too formulaic, relying on the same mid-tempo riffs and blast beats that we've heard a million times before. And some of the lyrics, while well-intentioned, can come off as a bit uninteresting or maybe a bit too personal.
But these minor quibbles are outweighed by the sheer force of Tomb Mold's musical annihilation, and introspective nature is also not afraid to test the boundaries of Death Metal. The Enduring Spirit is a welcome reminder that the enduring spirit of being self aware can be a breath of fresh air in a musical genre that is grounded in gore and the horror. Limits are meant to be broken and Tomb Mold is testing limits in a way Death Metal needs.
7.8 out of 10, and I can't wait to see where Tomb Mold goes from here now that they have kicked the door open and anything goes musically and lyrically.
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