• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

Experimentation in death metal can be a tricky game. Succeed, and you end up with masterpieces like Gorguts' "Obscura" and Immolation's "Here In After". Fail, and the result is steaming manure such as Morgoth or Atheist shat out on their final unmentionable releases. Fortunately for Torment, they've landed much closer to the first two examples mentioned here. Mixing up bludgeoning modern death metal with lashings of atmospheric passages and well-placed deviations into territory not usually explored in this genre, they've come up with a winner of a first CD. The trick is, every time they throw in an ambient passage, weird time signature, industrial-ish sampled bit or random piano interlude, there is always a hulking behemoth of a riff lurking around the corner, ready to smash a hole in your skull and fuck your jellied brain.

The production certainly helps here, being quite well polished but still rough enough to allow the violent guitar work to abrade the ears. Drums are obviously heavily triggered, but they are kept low enough to effectively propel the music without dominating the sonic picture. It also keeps the flow consistent when changing between keyboards and straight-up death metal, a facet which often makes or break this sort of thing. The production on the guitars, bass, and vocals is kept quite dry and straightforward aside from occasional vocal effects, allowing the music to speak for itself rather than struggle through a haze of digital trickery. Speaking of which, the vocals are excellent, generally discernable mid-range growling which never transgresses into excessive gut-puking or screeching. Very similar to David Vincent's work on Morbid Angel's "Domination" album in that respect.

Overall, this definitely reminds of the aforementioned masters Gorguts and Immolation, so fans of those two bands would do well to investigate this album. It's melodic enough to keep even casual death metal listeners interested, yet vicious enough for connoisseurs of the genre to smash up their lounge furniture while blasting it on 11. Oh, did I mention the lyrics are rather interesting too? They mostly deal with insanity, philosophy and introspective melancholy, so you will not finy any "rip the anus of the freshly torn fetus and eat its mothers dead cunt" here ;)