Tomb Mold: Manor of Infinite Forms (2018)

Tomb Mold was basically last year's version of Ossuarium: an old school-sounding death metal band that made huge waves in the underground metal scene.  Plus, they are on the same label: 20 Buck Spin.  The only real differences are that Tomb Mold was on their sophomore album in 2018, not their debut, and Tomb Mold is from Canada.

Just judging by the grotesque artwork, one can kind of guess what type music this band plays.  Yep, K-pop.

No.  This is a dirty and grimy death metal band with kind of an odd emphasis.  Apparently the band are just a bunch of big gamer nerds.  When looking at the band's Metal Archives page, lyrical themes are listed as "Bloodborne, Dark Souls".  That's right, the ultra hard gaming series.  Now, I do not really have anything against such a niche lyrical theme, but it does seem a little strange to base your death metal band on video games.  To each their own I suppose.  I have never played the Dark Souls series, but I do own Bloodborne and I can tell that game is fucking hard.  I have yet to beat the second mini-boss.  It is just not the type of game I can really play all that well.  I don't know.  I am not familiar enough with it to be able to tell what songs might be about Bloodborne and which are not, or even if that is still the band's focus. 

But enough of the lyrical theme.  The band's sound is reminiscent of the sludgiest moments in Scandinavian and Finnish death metal, while occasionally touching on doomier moments.  Sort of like Entombed playing Convulse.  The band are all accomplished musicians and the lead guitar melodies are particularly great.  The production is fairly clean, giving clarity to each of the instruments and making the album a very easy listen, despite the sludgy nature of the music.  The vocals are delivered in a sepulchral groaning bellow.  This is generally an album that is best heard all the way through instead of picking and choosing songs.  There is not a ton of variety, but it just flows well as one continuous album rather than a collection of parts.

I like this one quite a bit.  It is a little cleaner than yesterday's Ossuarium, but there is nothing really wrong with that.  I don't know that this is the next savior for death metal or anything, but it is a fun listen.  That is all we are really looking for from death metal.