TOMB

Pennhurst / Xesse

Crucial Blast

CD $12.00

04/15/2014 655035046822

CBR 108

MP3 $9.90

04/15/2014 655035046822

FLAC $11.99

04/15/2014 655035046822

Pennhurst / Xesse is a new collection of rare material from the shadowy black industrial outfit T.O.M.B., compiling their ultra-limited Pennhurst album and the tracks from the one-sided Xesse 12-inch previously released on Prison Tatt. With all new artwork presented in a six-panel digipack, this full-length disc delivers over an hour of the band’s bizarre brand of vile electro-acoustic noisescapes, oppressive industrial drift and ghoulish vocalizations dredged from the dank, black bowels of some long-abandoned mausoleum.
Originally released in 2009 as an extremely limited CDR on Esto Perpetua Records, the five tracks of abysmal necro-industrial filth on Pennhurst draw from source material that the band recorded at the notorious Pennhurst State and Norristown State Hospitals, two Philadelphia-area mental asylums that boast disturbing legacies of abuse and experimentation. As with their other releases, the work centers around nightmarish industrial soundscapes that mix blackened electronics with creepy field recordings, often erupting into suffocating, hellish noise. It’s without a doubt one of the group’s most intense blasts of sonic terror.
The next five tracks comprise Xesse, one of the band’s more ambient, drone-based works. No less fearsome than the preceding material, the EP opens with a chorus of wailing voices, the sounds of abject suffering echoing and reverberating within some nameless underground crypt. From there, Xesse moves into crushing Lustmordian walls of drone; thick, buzzing synthesizers rumble under snarling, electronically-warped vocals and other demonic utterances. Out of this growing graveyard chaos comes the sound of distorted chanting, sonic remnants of some unseen ritual taking place in the depths of T.O.M.B.’s soundscape.