After releasing three albums in three years and then spending the next four years in the wilderness, Toronto, Ontario’s Tomb Mold has been reborn on their fourth album, The Enduring Spirit, a thoroughly unabashed step into vast new territories. Yet for all its frenetic daring and audacious exploration, The Enduring Spirit is never anything other than unmistakably Tomb Mold.
While the expanding Tomb Mold architecture could be heard on last year’s self-released Aperture Of Body tape, particularly on final track “Prestige Of Rebirth,” it comes into clear focus throughout The Enduring Spirit. Certainly, Derrick Vella’s time creating within and expanding the doom genre in Dream Unending has seeped into the flesh of Tomb Mold, not to mention Payson Power and Max Klebanoff’s explorations in their own Daydream Plus project.
With album opener “The Perfect Memory (Phantasm Of Aura)” the band’s angular dimension shifting riffing appears right out of the gate as the track travels through varying degrees of progressive death metal and some of their most extreme material yet. “Will Of Whispers” enters with a jazz-like fantasy sequence before careening into a blinding white light barrage, tasteful guitar leads, and back to a dreamy serpentine pattern, encompassing entire universes in its nearly seven-minute runtime.
The back half of the record continues the voyage into what’s possible with the outward expansion of death metal norms, reaching the zenith of the eleven-plus-minute album closer “The Enduring Spirit Of Calamity,” an otherworldly journey into a vortex where all things converge in space and time and generating the tree of life via luminous celestial composition.
With four years away, a band with boundless creative energy, as Tomb Mold are, were certain to expand the scope of their vision, and on The Enduring Spirit they’ve shaped a record with a cinematic environment that offers unlimited avenues of exploration, both for themselves and the listener.
The Enduring Spirit was recorded at Boxcar Sound Recording by Sean Pearson (Tomb Mold, Dream Unending), and mixed and mastered by Arthur Rizk (Tomb Mold, Dream Unending, Kommand, Gravesend, Power Trip). The album’s artwork was handled by Jesse Jacobi who was also responsible for the Planetary Clairvoyance artwork, with additional artwork by Karmazid, layout and design by Chimère Noire, and photography by Colin Medley.
The Enduring Spirit will be released on all digital platforms this Friday, September 15. The physical release is confirmed for October 13 where it will be issued on CD, CS, and both LP and the label’s first picture disc LP ever, both vinyl versions including a four-panel insert and huge 36x24-inch poster.
The band writes with the news of the new album, “After three years spent spiraling in the cycle reincarnate necessity, a myriad of consciousness have now become one. Prolong the final death spiral of nature and dive into the gnashing current of The Enduring Spirit Of Calamity.”
Tracklisting:
“The Perfect Memory (Phantasm Of Aura)”
“Angelic Fabrications”
“Will Of Whispers”
“Fate’s Tangled Thread”
“Flesh As Armour”
“Servants Of Possibility”
“The Enduring Spirit Of Calamity”
Tomb Mold has booked two release shows for the new album, in Toronto September 15th and Montreal September 16. Additional live activities will be announced in the months ahead.
Dates:
September
15 – Toronto, ON – Lee’s Palace
16 – Montreal, QC – Foufounes Electriques
Tomb Mold:
Max Klebanoff – drums, vocals
Derrick Vella – guitar, bass
Payson Power – guitar
(Photo – Colin Medley)
