Release date: July 19, 2019 | 20 Buck Spin | Bandcamp | Facebook
Ah, yes, death metal. A genre I, until recently, only visited when it came with fancy little addenda like ‘dissonant’ or ‘technical’. To be fair, today’s subject of scrutiny still tends towards being a non-traditional dm record, but it’s closer to the raw viscera of the genre than most of my previous consumption. Tomb Mold fell into my orbit with their progressive statement The Enduring Spirit, but listening to their back catalogue made me realize how much potential death metal has even in its more primal forms.
Anyhow, it’s the band’s third album we’ve come to celebrate, as it turns 5 years old next week: Planetary Clairvoyance. For that occasion, four of our writers have gathered to heap praise and nostalgic impressions upon both band and record (as we’re wont to do with this feature).
Also, massive shout-out to 20 Buck Spin for being one of the most consistent metal labels in recent memory. They’re having another massive release year, so check out their roster if you haven’t already.
Iain Ferguson
Tomb Mold has come an awfully long way since 2017 when a friend first said to me ‘dude, there’s this new band that sings about Bloodborne’. It was an inauspicious introduction to a band just getting started, and as usual, I wondered if the quality would manage to outshine what I initially saw as a gimmick project. Fast forward to now, and Tomb Mold is a small luminary in the death metal scene that can be counted on for quality every time, and even showed massive evolution with last year’s The Enduring Spirit. Most of that good will can be traced to that initial three year run of three albums, capped off with today’s focus; Planetary Clairvoyance.
Shameful as it is to admit it, I’m using this feature to course correct myself. When Planetary Clairvoyance first dropped, Tomb Mold’s hype had grown so rapidly that I was kind of tired of hearing their name. 2017’s Primordial Malignity was a delightfully gross debut album, sure, and I got great mileage out of the 2018’s churning sophomore Manor of Infinite Forms. I respected the band for keeping at it and crafting a third album for a third consecutive year, but with all the buzz generated, my inner contrarian pushed back hard. Maybe save some of the hype for even fresher newcomers, you know?
Expectedly, revisiting Planetary Clairvoyance over the last several days made clear how much of a mistake I had made to ignore the album on release. It’s excellent, as the band always has been. It’s as gritty and gnarly as their first two albums for sure, with a very old school, not totally clear production aiding a queasy atmosphere. The riffs across tracks like “Beg for Life” and “Infinite Resurrection” are rooted in the murky sounds of the grimy end of old school US death metal, alongside some clear inspirations from Finland’s old death metal scene. The undercurrents of rugged thrash and dreary doom definitely spice things up, and make sure that the album never lacks for dynamics as many other OSDM bands fall prey to.
But also, Planetary Clairoyance showed a marked departure from the more traditional feel of Manor of Infinite Forms, even coming just a mere year later. As early as the pseudo-interlude “Phosphorene Ultimate”, Tomb Mold was drifting in weirder, more spacey directions than they had previously explored. More harmony leads start to crop up across the album, and riffs get a little more adventurous and acrobatic. Come “Cerulean Savation”, the band is starting to feel more like one of those classic progressive death metal groups a la Human-era Death, if not so blatantly proggy. It’s an organic shift, but from the album’s opening to the end of “Heat Death”, Tomb Mold metamorphose and emerge from the swamps to propel themselves towards the cosmos. Much like exploring the upper parts of Yharnam Cathedral and noticing that, suddenly, aliens are showing up, Tomb Mold clued us in that things were just going to get spacier from here.
Of course, that payoff would have to wait. History shows that the band let off the gas after Planetary Clairvoyance, partially due to worldwide illness, and partially to explore side projects. That break lead to some wonderful things, with Derrick Vella putting together the outstanding dream doom project Dream Unending and therefore being responsible for my favorite metal album of 2022 with Song of Salvation. And when that dreaminess found its way back to a refreshed Tomb Mold with the stellar The Enduring Spirit in 2023, I knew I’d been a fool to lose my interest in those years before.
No amount of Decibel dress code discourse can take away the fact that every Tomb Mold album is genuinely great. Planetary Clairvoyance isn’t my absolute favorite album they’ve done at this point, but it only lags behind by inches at most. It’s an evolutionary leap charted across a single album’s run-time, but it never once loses the plot or forces riffs that aren’t of the highest caliber. As a capstone to the band’s excellent opening trilogy, Planetary Clairvoyance is an outstanding death metal album, and it did its job solidifying Tomb Mold’s place on the contemporary death metal stage to truly take to the stars the next time around. Onward and upward!
Adam Parshall Terry
I stumble upon new music in a whimsically varied manner. Sure I follow new music blogs and keep my fingers on the pulse of the release radar. But I also check out bands based on nothing more than a genre tag, a similar artists list, an interesting album cover, or a killer name alone. From the first when I heard the buzz starting to build around a band called Tomb Mold I knew I was in for something particularly filthy and the Toronto-based underground death metal act did not disappoint. So Tomb Mold’s third album Planetary Clairvoyance was actually my first exposure to the band. Having since gone through their back catalog it remains near the top of their discography today.
About halfway into the first track “Beg For Life” the fairly standard death metal assault recedes for a moment to allow a soft acoustic guitar line to the fore giving a taste of something a little bit different. Then in another unique turn the growly vocals return over the still quite mellow guitar. A more typical move might have been to forgo vocals entirely for a melodic interlude or introduce some clean vocals to the mix. This is an immediate tip off that Tomb Mold aren’t afraid to do things a little differently this time around on Planetary Clairvoyance. By balancing some opposing elements in this way they avoid the pitfalls of monotonous death metal drudgery while retaining all the heaviness.
The relentless title track Planetary Clairvoyance builds and builds up, pummeling drums leading into a guitar solo near the end and then the thing just abruptly ends. All of that momentum falls straight off a cliff directly into the noisy interlude glitch of “Phosphorene Ultimate”. There’s a few standout moments like this on the record that leave a lasting impact far beyond just getting slammed against a wall of neverending growls and blast beats. Don’t get me wrong, I love bands like Autopsy and Cannibal Corpse, clearly strong influences for Tomb Mold. But sometimes their constant barrage is easy to get lost in, leaving little to really latch onto.
The unsettling interlude of “Phosphorene Ultimate” is followed up with a pair of back to back standout tracks in “Infinite Resurrection” and “Accelerated Phenomenae”. In terms of album layout this is one of the best decisions made on the entire record. “Infinite Resurrection” is filled with start-and-stop guitar hooks complemented by nasty gutturals and drum fills. This song is a true headbanger’s delight fit for the most extreme mosh pits. “Accelerated Phenomenae” really shows off the guitar work with harmony and melodic lines throughout that are almost having their own back and forth conversation in the background of the constant low growls.
Tomb Mold keeps up the engagement and interest on Planetary Clairvoyance with variety and by taking a few risks. The result is a more diverse sound overall. By stepping out of the shadow of their Finnish influences, albums like Demilich’s Adversary of Emptiness and Convulse’s World Without God, Tomb Mold started to shine a bit more on their own. Developing a more distinct sound that would ultimately mature into their landmark album The Enduring Spirit, a personal favorite of mine from last year. The mixing on Planetary Clairvoyance puts a spotlight directly on the guitar solos. Especially midway through Infinite Resurrection and the endings of “Beg for Life” and “Accelerated Phenomenae”. The increased technicality shows a clear progression from Tomb Mold strongly channeling Cynic.
“Heat Death” is just an absolute monster of a closing track. Tomb Mold took an opportunity to show off at the end and ran with it. Starting with intense guitar and drum work moving into more groove focused downtempo licks and of course another of this albums signature guitar solos. All of that before the cavernous growls enter the mix at the midpoint. Then “Heat Death” slows down to a dreary lurching doom pace. The song moves in and out of several sonic landscapes and pulls off an excellent exhibition of the sci-fi death metal flavor Tomb Mold’s imagery has become known for.
Planetary Clairvoyance is by no means a perfect record. There are sections that fumble slightly or could have been explored further. But this album laid the groundwork for Tomb Mold to fully realize their vision on The Enduring Spirit. That record is one of the best death metal albums of the last twenty years and it wouldn’t have been possible without Planetary Clairvoyance. There’s a world where Tomb Mold just continued to play it safe. Sticking to the sounds of their earlier work like Manor of Infinite Forms without evolving. And that world is far less interesting.
In the intervening years since the release of Planetary Clairvoyance bands like Tomb Mold, Blood Incantation, Horrendous, and Undeath are digging that old school sound up out of the grave and giving it a much needed injection of new blood. The combined creative efforts of these artists and others like them are helping to keep the rotting corpse of death metal gruesome for many more years to come. Five years later the mold continues to grow on the tomb of Planetary Clairvoyance and we are all better for it.
Jake Walters
I have reached the age where most of my personality revolves around death metal and FromSoft games, and while that’s not all I have to offer this world, it sure pays off on days like this. Tomb Mold – famously named after an item in Bloodborne – have been one of the ‘it’ bands in death metal since they entered our consciousness back in 2016. In 2019 they released their third LP in as many years Planetary Clairvoyance on the imitable 20 Buck Spin label and as luck would have it, it was released on my birthday, so hell yeah to that.
Coming off of Manor of Infinite Forms, this album felt different right from the start. There’s a strong emphasis on atmosphere, to my ear at least and while there are riffs aplenty Planetary Clairvoyance is a death metal record that seeks to evoke rather than spell everything out. The wonderful artwork of this album with its Geiger-inspired fusion of biomechanical life with the purples and greens suggestive of an eerie atmosphere, an idea that is cemented with the opening track “Beg for Life.” This song features a lot of what one would expect from Tomb Mold but man it just feels eerie and almost moist with atmosphere and at almost seven minutes, this track veers into death doom territory a bit more than their usual fare. This is how you make interesting death metal without compromise and still have plenty of experimentation, dynamics, and progression.
All of this talk of atmosphere and progression and all of that doesn’t hold Tomb Mold back from absolutely slaying riffs and grooves on this record. The title track has some of the best grooves of this entire era of heavy music and tracks like “Infinite Resurrection” and “Cerulean Salvation” showcase just how savage this band can be. While they still needed to flex these muscles as part of their sonic identity, it’s often the other moments on this album that really set it apart. Changing tempos, brief-but-incendiary solos, and unlike a lot of more recent death metal outings, isn’t just an aimless riff salad. These songs build on themselves and each other and it creates a record I just can’t stop listening to.
Planetary Clairvoyance represents a helluva climb by Tomb Mold given that this album was made in their third year of existence and their third LP: the progression from their beginnings is staggering. There’s no weak spots, it sits at just over 38 minutes, and the production is in your face but also completely legible for every aspect. This hits like an old-school death metal album but an ornamental one. Not those shiny, beautiful ornaments but ones that are covered in the viscous remains of lesser metal records and the cybernetic circuitry of the future. While Manor of Infinite Forms and their recent turn toward progressive death metal may usually steal the show this chapter in Tomb Mold’s discography is one to celebrate.
Broc Nelson
2019 was such a banner year for metal that looking back on all of the great releases from that year is like visiting distant family, at this point. I was firmly entrenched in my metal obsession which had long traversed many subgenres, but 2019 was the year that death metal began to take a much firmer hold on my listening habits.
The big two, for me, that were leading the pack in the old school death metal revival were Blood Incantation, who already were exploring progressive songs and the weirdness of the cosmos, and Tomb Mold, who earned my devotion with Manor of Infinite Forms. Those bands are still the benchmark artists for me when it comes to amazing death metal, but I didn’t know that they would be back then.
Tomb Mold dropped Planetary Clairvoyance to much deserved hype, but they delivered harder than I anticipated. I was immediately drawn in by the cover art. What hideous sounds lurk behind the dripping Lovecraftian-meets-machine monstrosity? The slow synth build do the devastatingly catchy riff on “Beg For Life” immediately sent me into an inner-space, eyes closed with purple and green nebulas floating in my mind’s eye. The intricacy and interplay between the instruments was impeccable, then about midway through, the acoustic guitar break that takes us into pummeling toms and guttural vocals left me in awe.
It is still an awe-inspiring moment. No, they weren’t the first or last to do it, but it was evidence that so much more was on deck for Planetary Clairvoyance. Pure guitar heroism weaves its way from track to track like neutrinos swiftly moving through the mass of a killer low-end and rhythm section. Tomb Mold are tight as fuck, like musically interlocked, but also in the sense that when they go full death metal gallop they enter a radness wormhole that transports you through time far quicker than you realize, only to show you the stops and starts of galaxies exploding.
“Phosphorous Ultimate” shifts gears into a sobering exploration of the vastness of it all, like Matthew McConaughey drifting out of contact into the unknown. We are then taken to interdimensional labyrinthian explorations on the increasingly complex “Infinite Resurrection”. I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing Tomb Mold live, but I really hope this track is on the set list.
“Accelerative Phenomenae” is an impenetrable slab of pure death metal, played fast and intense with a stunning ending of solos and shrieked vocals. It is a song that deserves to be in any death metal fan’s rotation, regardless of how some wizened battle jacket and bullet belt wearing elitists may feel about the band’s appearance.
The show stopper, and final track, on Planetary Clairvoyance is “Heat Death”. Thrashy riffs and pummeling drums usher us into a singularity of death metal at it’s finest. Nearly the first half of the song is a transcendent orchestra of riffs, melodies, and dynamic composition before things slow down and the vocals kick in. We are moving closer and closer to a star, the heat rising as gravity catches hold, the inevitability of the title around the corner as the song fades into utterly unearthly sounds. It plays like a reverse “White Rabbit” the peak is our demise.
Tomb Mold have only gotten better and guitarist Derrick Vella’s side project Dream Unending are, albeit different, a massive delight in their own right. There are even more OSDM bands out there now, exploring each avenue that the genre can go without abandoning the core spirit of Death, Carcass, Cannibal Corpse, and others. Yet, Tomb Mold have already established an untouchable legacy in such a short time. Even if it has only been five years, it feels like a death metal landscape without Planetary Clairvoyance would be missing a modern classic.
