Genre - Doom Death/Black Metal
| 1. | Into the Arms of Yama |
| 2. | The Grand Tormentor | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3. | Meditation for Sacrifice | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4. | Wasteland of Thataka | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 5. | Exile | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 6. | Beyond Darkness and Death | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 7. | The Tomb | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 8. | Tandava | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 9. | Cast into Fire | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 10. | Funeral Lotus |
“Beheaded
Ouroboros” was one
of my top rated releases of 2010, one of the most downright
unrelentingly putrid and heavy albums to crawl out of the gutter that
year with its insane gutturals
and earth cracking guitar riffs. Certainly if esoteric Death Metal
that takes its leads from the Helmkamp inspired barbarity of
ANGELCORPSE and ORDER FROM
CHAOS along with INCANTATION's monolithic death processions
then you've come to the right place. Fresh
off making the transition from Ireland's Invictus to the high-flying
Osmose, “The Grand
Tormentor” is the sophomore effort from this act and
big things were expected. So
how much has this unholy monstrosity progressed since their awe
inspiring debut? Well, if it
was possible to better such a
masterpiece then somehow
they have managed to do it
with “The Grand Tormentor”,
and in the process managed to
make it somehow even fucking
heavier than before. The
result is a band who now
along with countrymen DIOCLETIAN are now essentially the flag bearers
for extreme metal in New Zealand.
'Into
the Arms of Yama' kicks off
proceedings, a ten minute
filth encrusted opus that
plunges you straight into the inferno with its initial
INCANTATION-esque Death/Doom dirge with the impression that this is
“The Grand Tormentor” slowly dragging its lumbering bulk up and
out of the pit awakening for its tyranny on the world above. This
eventually succumbs to a menacing drumbeat, down tuned guitars soaked
in distortion and Void's inhuman gutturals hovering just beneath the
music like unearthly bubbles of evil, which
I suppose is basically the foundation for the whole album.
Once you've heard this you'll understand what I mean about this being
incredibly heavy, I mean there's more crushing
low end present on “The Grand Tormentor” than the
collective mass of your average American 'Weight Watchers' class. The
tempo of the album varies frequently enough so things never get
stagnant, faster passages with some rather headbangable rhythms
intertwined with those previously mentioned slow and foreboding ones.
Such an examples of faster moments would be the likes of the title
track which hits you with an
intensity which could cleave skulls or
'Wasteland of Thataka' of
which the only way to
describe is as pure unholy barbarism. The
production here is such that as fucked up, chaotic and asphyxiating
as it is, it still lends extremely well to each individual aspect of
the music. All the instruments have enough clarity to flourish in
their own given way, and when
you can include two
songs over nine minutes on album and still retain the listeners
attention then you're onto a winner.
The
music hits you like a wave of thick black tar with a noxious
putrescence; the riffs bore through with a grinding ferocity ranging
from doomy dirges to echoes of Black Metal with frantic tremolo
picking and the drums ominous
like an encroaching thunder while the vocals indecipherable and
sickening, lurk beneath. Hell there's even time now and again for a
few esoteric solos to raise their head. It
almost sounds as if this is one of Satan's apocalyptic sermons that
has been spewed straight up through a vent from the underworld and
presented itself in all its fetid, sulphuric glory as what we now
know as “The Grand
Tormentor”. It's pretty much the embodiment of the
'anti-mainstream'
within Death Metal, no technical nonsense and no melody whatsoever,
just a sewage pit of ritualistic Doom Death Metal insanity. Fans of
DIOCLETION, HERESIARCH and WRATHPRAYER probably already need no
introduction to these guys, but this should definitely appeal to
those who are fans so-called 'War Metal'
and of bands such as INCANTATION, WINTER and even ASPHYX. Just be
warned, gas masks out lads, you'll
certainly fucking need them.
9.5/10
Sounds like - Wrathprayer, Incantation, Diocletian
Originally written for The Metal Observer
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