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On the Radar: T.O.M.B.

At the Second Saturday Record Show in scenic Wayne, New Jersey, this past weekend, I ran into a buddy I know from there who puts on noise shows up in Nyack. Now, I’ll rarely check out a band based on their name alone, but when he told me the act who recently played for him was T.O.M.B. and that the acronym stood for Total Occultic Mechanical Blasphemy, what the hell choice did I have?

Next time you’re looking for a litmus test to see how tr00 you are, I’d suggest hitting up “Brazen Endurance” on the one-man outfit’s ultra-necro MySpace page. While on a personal level I prefer the gloomily ambient “Maz ov tha Damd,” the drum machine ping and far-away screaming — not to mention the blown-out megacrust of “Unholy Utero” — create an atmosphere that makes most black metal look like KidzBop, and if you told me there was a guitar on “Forbidden Calls Invoking Poltergeists,” I’d probably believe you, but otherwise I’d swear that noise is just howling agonies in the darkened snowy forests of the night.

Or some such.

Tongue-in-cheek black metal cliche aside, T.O.M.B. deliver exactly what their name portends, and while it’s not really my thing in terms of what I’m going to put on in the car for the ride home, I can appreciate it when it’s done well — or at least done poorly on purpose and for effect. Hoist a claw, behold the grimness that is Total Occultic Mechanical Blasphemy, and tell ’em some dude who likes stoner rock sent you.

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