Tombal Grave Of The Damned Review
Tombal
Grave of the Damned
Blood Harvest
2026
Dark, grimy, and absolutely ferocious are most often how I like my death metal. I especially like it when those three adjectives apply to death metal that has a decidedly more old-school bend now. Don't misunderstand, I love the subsets too: everything from brutal, melodic, technical, or even some slam. I like it all. Having said that, especially within the tech or brutal schools of thought, I feel much of it has become overly polished or overly produced and relies on a template for production. Much of it has become a race to see how many notes can be played or how insanely fast we can go. I'm happy to report that the debut EP Grave of the Damned from Tombal has none of that going on.
Tombal began just last year and consists of Luigi Cara, handling guitars and growls; Massimiliano Falchi on the four strings; and Luca Barone behind the drums. This five-song ravager is a strong opening salvo for the band. Technically an intro (“Cryptic Invocations”) and four songs, but they all rip. The power trio are unabashed old-school Swedeath, right down to the HM-2 buzzsaw guitars. Their influences are proudly worn on their tattered, blood-stained sleeves. However, this is not a complete aping of the days of yore. Tombal set themselves apart with having more of a pure death metal sound and rely heavily on blast beat sections, proficient leads (“Cemetarial Death Worship”), audible bass, and somewhat deeper growled vocals, minus the hardcore punk energy and urgency a lot of early stuff in this vein had. There's still plenty of aggression and speed (“Funebral Furnace”), along with the tremolo-picked minor-key guitar melodies and the occasional double-bass-forward breakdown sections.
The production here is absolutely old school, with plenty of rawness and organic instruments. I would be very surprised if they didn't track a lot of this live, save for vocals and auxiliary guitar parts/leads. If that is indeed the case, props to them because these songs do not let up in intensity, and they are busy riffing for nearly 16 minutes. The standout cut here is the closer, “Cathedrals of Rot,” which has a nice mid-paced outro that is bookended by punctuated held chords atop the famous guitar trills we know and love from this stuff. In an age where metal of this kind is so meticulous and modern sounding, it's refreshing to hear something that sounds like it came straight from Tomas Skogsberg and Sunlight Studios circa 1991.
Tombal certainly isn’t doing anything new, but they are doing it with purposeful arrangements, unrelenting brutality, and quality songs. Grave of the Damned is 100% pure, uncut Swedeath done right from a young band that shows plenty of promise. In fact, they have threatened to begin recording their full-length by year’s end. I say bring it on and make the now-departed LG Petrov proud…
RIYL- Entombed, Dismember, Bloodbath, Carnal Savagery
~TB