It?s always a good thing to see new names pop up from wherever they?ve been hiding. Even for us hardcore music freaks this still happens, albeit more sporadically. Tombi didn?t ring a bell, but of course the label it?s been released on does and provided somewhat of an indicator before I listened to ?Black Humid Mist?. Walls of blissful drone, thick guitar ambient, spooky chanting maybe, all Students Of Decay signifiers and you can?t possibly hate on those qualifications.

Tombi is the nom plume of Twonicorn Tapes boss Ry Wharton and as far as I?m aware he?s only released a tape as Tombi on Tone Filth last year. This ?Black Humid Mist? cd-r contains two pieces, a short four minute appetizer and the near 30 minutes of noisy bliss that makes up for much of the title track.

With its nebulous melodic shadows, ?All Crops Will Wither? makes great use of it?s relatively short time span. A somewhat restrained, psyched out teaser to draw you into the album?s core piece. If that doesn?t work out for you there?s always the ill-boding waves of drone that start out the title track. Soothing at first but very soon moving towards big, fat walls of feedback, powerful enough to make you stop in your tracks for a while. As if you?re witnessing the unlikely transformation of Stars Of The Lid into Birchville Cat Motel. There?s all sorts of things going on as well, little shifts in tone, underlying psychedelic washes of effects. It?s rather relentless pace also helps the piece from falling into the uncomprising pits of boredom, you feel like you have to keep up and pay attention to it while it?s dynamics make all these tiny shifts.

Tombi unknowingly again makes a case against all the cd-r/tape/underground label naysayers that even if there?s a lot of mud to wade through there?s always the joys of finding new names that don?t fail to make an impression. 8/10 -- Joris Heemskerk (17 July, 2007)