Are you prepared to be tortured? Torture might be the most ingenious slam band in recent memory or the most insufferable band in recent memory. On one side you have some of the most unbearable music to listen to, but on the other side you have music that was created to show their dislike of war, the inhumane treatment of fellow men, and anti-genocide and bring awareness to the atrocities being conducted in the Middle East. The music of this band is slow, down-tuned, frog-squealing, and hard-hitting metal. The thing that makes the music so hard to get through is the length of the songs and how incredibly slow the music can be at times. Songs can range from 3 minutes to 16 minutes of slow and painful redundancies like chugging riffs or slow drum patterns. Sitting down in one sitting to listen to this album might have been the hardest thing I've done all this year because you can feel like your skin is being peeled from your body with how slow the album progresses and how the heaviness just scrapes away at your ears at how painful it is. The vocals have a weird low frog-like squeal to them that is just hitting all the wrong frequencies in your ear and making you want to shrivel up and die. Impressive vocal technique, but to hear it for more than an hour long is just torture in itself. Now I can say the drums, when not playing slow and ignorant, have a good synamic feel to them at times with the use of the double kicks and the blast beats they have. The songs sound great when they increase the tempo at times and sound like a “normal” band. Even the riffs when they are playing faster are refreshing. Now most of the album is slow and torturous, but the last two songs are some of the most haunting and saddest songs I've heard on record. The first being more of a straightforward metal instrumental track that feels very cohesive and raw in a great way. Then the last track: Something about the repetitive sounds and chilling use of the instruments; it feels like you are mourning the loss of a field of countless humans that stretches beyond the horizon. It genuinely brought tears to my eyes with how terrible I felt. Does the message out weigh the torturess music here? No, I don’t think so. Sonically, the album is tough to get through, and yes, the message is great, but just based on the record, it's a hard album to get through even if the message is a worthy one.
Torture - "4 - Enduring Freedom" Review
Agonized Desperation
Finale II. “Wounded/For P.K. Reprise (Blue)
Finale III. “Crosses (White)