A stark black and white image greets me upon looking at the cover art of the new Torture Killer album, quite a transformation in style to their previous couple of albums which had bold colours on great artwork to create strikingly memorable visuals (their debut notwithstanding, as that was pretty dubious as covers go). Still, it features monotone skeletons which have been impaled on inverted crucifix stakes, so at least the horror level has remained even if the colour palette hasn’t! Similarly, Torture Killer’s musical style hasn’t changed a huge amount either – but with this, their fourth album since forming in 2002, they serve up another platter of gore infested grooving death metal with their own character intact.
Starting out as a Six Feet Under cover band, naming themselves after a Six Feet Under song, and having the leathery smoke-dried lungs of a certain Mr Chris Barnes appear on your albums (not only regularly as a guest, but also for an entire album with their 2nd album ‘Swarm’) – you don’t have to be a genius to work out what these guys hoped to achieve with their music; catchy simplistic riffage which is filled with more hooks than a Cenobite’s underwear. Well, achieve it they do – in fact I’d say these guys have got the SFU sound down pat, and to be fair to them they arguably write better albums than the band they venerate. They certainly seem to put more variety into their musical output than the majority of their heroes’ works.
Album opener ‘Devil’s Rejects’ is typical Torture Killer, with a great bounding riff that emanates from the Obituary-like chainsaw guitars and new vocalist Pessi Haltsonen growling out his larynx throughout (I say new, but he debuted on the bands 2012 EP ‘I Chose Death’). The album’s title track ‘Phobia’ sees the band chock out a short, metrical churn of a song which makes up for in neck snap-ability what it lacks in dynamism, and ‘Written in Blood’ (featuring Mr SFU himself Chris Barnes on vocal guest appearance once again), presents a dissonant squirming riff which leads into a melody filled ending, incorporating excellent haunting licks which weave over each other meticulously. ‘The Book of a Dying World’ opens with a battering ram of guitars, forcing riffage down your throat faster than can be swallowed, exploding your innards and leaving you a meaty, musical mess on the floor – this is of course until the guitars slow to a thick sludgy pace to humiliatingly compress your remains dry of all liquids with their unforgiving leaden chords. All this is handled deftly, without the heavy-handed dullness that a lot of their groove/death styled contemporaries often apply. These guys have always been able to write a great, eerie melody, but now it seems they know exactly when to use it, and to what degree. Hell, album closer ‘Voices’ even sounds surprising like ‘Brave Murder Day’ era-Katatonia at times, such is the layering, repetition and straightforwardness of its musical phrasing.
Simply put, with ‘Phobia’, Torture Killer have done enough to step out of the shadow of Six Feet Under which has persistently (and understandably) loomed so menacingly over their career. Although they often use similar trappings and a large proportion of the SFU groove, these guys really are beginning to transmogrify into their own beast right now. But don’t just take my word for it, check it out for yourself – you might be pleasantly surprised.
(7.5/10 Lars Christiansen)
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